Watching the Watchers (Catching Fire)
by SJlikeslists
Summary: Gale's mother and Madge's father keep watch over their children as the story continues.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ is not mine.

(Mayor Undersee)

I have been waiting. There hasn't been much else to do. I can't make _them_ unsee what they saw. I can't make _them_ unknow that District 12 no longer conforms to _their_ standards. So, I wait. I wait for _them_ to decide what form of correction _they_ will administer. I wait to see if I will be able to do anything to mitigate it when it comes. I wait to see what form of recompense _they_ will require from me personally. There are so many things that _they_ could take, and there are so few of them that actually matter. _They_ know that. _They_ will make _their_ choices accordingly.

Our naturally quiet home has become unnaturally quiet once again - not with the same tension that flowed between Madge and me at the start of the last of the Games, but with a tension that comes from three people waiting to see how their lives will be unraveled next. It isn't a pleasant way to exist. I admit that I'm not helping. I could try to not let my tension seep into the atmosphere of our home, I could ignore the desire to constantly be looking for signs of what may be coming, or I could be cherishing the time I currently have with my daughter instead of worrying that that time may be coming to a close. Somehow, I can't.

I have found myself spending longer and longer hours in the Justice Building. The memos keep me company, and they do nothing to ease my mind. I read memos, I respond to memos, I try to head off further potential disasters as presented by the memos, and I ponder every possible implication of each word that each of the memos contains. I am drowning in them. There are memos about the school curriculum, memos about mine productivity and repair requests, memos about the Peacekeeper contingent, and memos about every possible detail of life in District 12 that could be used against us.

I see them in my sleep (when sleep is something that I can no longer manage to avoid), and I agonize over every phrase I use in each response. Am I choosing the correct words? Am I making it better? Am I making it worse? Does where _their_ wrath falls depend upon my answers to the questions? And when I am sitting bleary eyed in a dimly lit office nearly at the end of my mental rope drafting my eighth attempt at finding the words that will deflect any part of _their_ ire, I wonder what type of horrible person it makes me that I wish _they_ would just get on with it already and end this limbo in which _they_ have suspended us.

I have been waiting, but I have not been doing so graciously. Madge would testify to that. She waits as well, but she does so with the calm determination she displayed when she was insisting that Katniss would come home. We understand each other better, but that doesn't mean that I understand all. I don't grasp what it is that keeps her so calm.

_They_ are planning something intricate. That's the only option that makes any sort of sense. I wasn't in any position to be aware of the deeper bureaucratic workings of the District in the aftermath of the last Quarter Quell. I do not know if the mayor at the time found himself buried underneath a flurry of double meaning messages stacked in piles on his desk. I only know what I saw from the outside. I only know what the entire District saw. I saw the sudden influx of new Peacekeepers. I saw the sudden crackdown on tiny infractions that hadn't previously been worth their time to bother about. I saw someone who was supposed to be a Victor return with all the pomp and circumstance that a Capitol arranged celebration entailed only to be left to bury the entirety of his family after the cameras and their wielders had disappeared on the train to go back from whence they came. I saw blood splattered pieces of a board game marking the entrance to a shop of a family who had buried a daughter and sister and then had to bury a husband and father.

It was decisive, and it was swift. It was very, very swift. And that begs the question, what are _they_ waiting for now? Why are _they_ waiting? What are _they_ waiting for? We forgot out lesson too quickly, and _they_ can't have that. It's too troublesome to have Districts that won't remain in their place. I would say that I wished that my daughter had understood that in the first place, but I suspect that she caught on quicker than I realized and that it didn't matter nearly as much to her as I would have wanted it to when she did.

My Madge wasn't meant to live in fear. My practical, rational girl with her calm demeanor and quiet ways doesn't flinch in the face of everything going wrong because, for her, everything has been wrong all along. That becomes another reason, another justification to myself of why it is best that I not darken the doorstep of our home when it can be avoided. I've learned I'm often a coward when it comes to my daughter. The truth is that I'm shamed in the face of her conviction. I cannot share it. I saw how easily hope was squashed the last time our home on the outskirts of the realm was in the line of fire. I saw how quickly people forgot (or chose not to remember) when it made their lives more convenient.

Simultaneously, I can't want Madge to lose her belief. Partly, because I have no desire to witness the crushing blows that would require. Partly, because her conviction is such a deeply ingrained part of all she is that I think I would lose her completely if it were to go. That may, of course, be a moot point. I may lose her anyway.

He arrived this morning. He being President Snow. I was so shocked that I don't think I even verbalized a response to the security officer's announcement. I was drenched in sweat in the few moments between that announcement and the appearance of my visitor coming through the door. I had never seen him face to face before. It was an honor I was always rather well pleased to forgo. President Snow does not conduct business with anyone from the Districts for any reason. Except, apparently, to ensure that he has made his point clear when he is issuing a threat.

Something about that man is wrong. I've always sensed it from a distance. The preoccupation with power manifests itself even across a television broadcast to anyone who knows what they are looking for. The whispered rumors add to the feeling (although everyone knows that they would be best served by forgetting that there ever was such a thing as whispers where the President is concerned). In person, there was nothing to be seen or heard that would cause me to amend my belief that there is something not right about the man that was standing in front of me.

It took me nearly the entire interview to place the cloying part of the combination of smells that filled the space that he was occupying. It was slow of me; I know. I blame years of visitors from the Capitol traipsing through my home with their fake hair colors and fake faces and fake additions to their bodies for the fact that the thought that the President would actually be wearing a real flower had not occurred to me. It served as a reminder that I was not dealing with a member of the Capitol citizenry; I was dealing with one of _them_ - in person. Although I was not in need of much in the way of further reminders with the scent of blood calling to mind whippings in the square and Peacekeepers using their rifles to bludgeon that had been all too common in a time before my daughter was born.

My audience with the President did not last long. The man strikes me as someone who is never inclined to dither. (That only cements my belief that we will be hit with a carefully constructed punishment, and his words did nothing to change my mind.) I noticed that he took a long look at the framed picture of Madge that sits on my desk before he left. It was intended that I notice. I've never before regretted having that decoration. I had to bite back the bile rising up in my throat as he left the room. The picture doesn't really matter. It is not as if he doesn't already know that Madge is my weakest point. The man is, after all, a father himself.

I think the strain of the waiting and watching and wondering of the seemingly endless previous months in combination with the lack of sleep and the shock of being forced to make double edged small talk with a man who could erase my family with a snap of his fingers all became more than my nerves could handle at that point. I managed to maintain control until I was sure that both he and his security had truly gone. Then, I sank into my chair and laughed.

It wasn't an occasion for laughing. I was in trouble. My District was in trouble. My family was in trouble. Worse things were coming. I still laughed. I couldn't seem to help myself. Two teenagers had managed to upend the status quo of life throughout all 12 Districts and the Capitol itself. They had people scrambling to realign the balance of power. They had the normally calm and unflappable President Snow, the single most powerful man in our world, disquieted enough that he was stepping in to handle the situation personally. They had caused so much turmoil, and they hadn't even done so on purpose.

It would be beautifully poetic if I didn't know that we were all going to suffer for it.

* * *

(Hazelle)

Two children left the District on Reaping Day, and two children came home. This year, however, they didn't come home in boxes. There were parties and interviews and chaos and a complete lack of privacy. There were reporters and camera people and Capitol escorts everywhere that we turned. My children were photographed hugging their "cousin," eating at banquets with her, and opening packages on Parcel Day. We answered question after question about how we felt and if we were proud and found way after way around answering the question of what we thought about the rule change that had allowed them both to come home.

Then, they (the Capitol invaders as Vick called them when he was sure no one else could hear) were gone, and things were supposed to settle back to normal. I've dealt with enough life changes to know that things never settle back to normal; they fall into a new pattern that becomes what normal is now. This time, this change is no different. Our lives can't go back to what they were before. Some of the details that made up our lives before don't exist anymore. My family has too many ties to the Everdeens for it to be any other way.

Still, some things remain the same. I still have four children (although at least one of them would object to that label) to feed and clothe and get through winter chills and summer fevers. I still have laundry to collect and scrub and dry and return. I still have boys who are growing up and questioning their boundaries with me and with their brothers. I still have a baby girl who wants to be told stories and tucked into bed at night. I still have them. I still have all four of them. Other changes are easily weathered with that in mind.

I wasn't sure that it was going to be that way. I waited for something to happen when the cameras went away, and I worried that my family would be included what with the newly discovered kinship and all. Nothing like what I was waiting for came to be. The Everdeens (unlike the Abernathys) are still alive in their new home in the Victor's Village, and I shrugged off the waiting for more damage to be done. I've dealt with enough life changes to know that you shouldn't waste days. So, we've settled into our new normal where two children were allowed to leave the Games and left to struggle with what they've seen and done.

I can't imagine it's easy to find your way. It isn't as though they are likely to get much in the way of good advice from their mentor. I'm not sure the Hob could supply enough liquor to support three of them if they decided to go down that path. Besides, Prim ought to be enough to keep Katniss sober, and the boy doesn't strike me as the type. They, neither of them, have taken quite the same type of beating that Abernathy did. I don't know what the boy does, but my Vick reports the things he hears on his rounds. Whatever he is doing in that big house to cope, he is doing it on his own. The rest of the baker's family doesn't spend their time there.

Ari Everdeen still sees patients (more often than not with an observing and aiding Prim attached to her side); she's just doing it from a different location. She seems the same as ever, but I wouldn't really know. I've never understood that woman, and I'm not likely to start now. That a fairly large chunk of Katniss's now free time is spent lingering in my kitchen drinking tea and talking over the merits of stew meat tells me that she doesn't understand much about her mother either (and more to the point, her mother isn't much use at understanding her).

I'm not meddling. If the girl wants to try to forget, I'm not going to be the one to remind her. If she and her mother don't have much in the way of being mother and daughter, that's their business. It isn't mine. And the baker's boy and his family certainly aren't mine. I have my own brood to manage.

Posy is, of course, the easiest. It's all a benefit of still being so young. To her, the scary parts have all faded away with Katniss's return. It's all pretty dresses and fires that don't burn and pretty cookies with flowers that she eats with Prim. My boys aren't nearly so easy.

Rory is perhaps the easiest of the three. He's twelve now, and he just wants to be like Gale. He misses his brother now that he is in the mines. There is no more time together walking back and forth to and from school. There are no evenings spent playing games together the way there used to be after Gale had finished his routine of snare runs and visits to the Hob. Rory is feeling the lack whether he will admit it out loud or not. He wants recognition from Gale that he is old enough to do more to help, but Gale isn't inclined to give it. It isn't so strange (this balancing act of growing up that he is doing). I understand it; I even expected it. I think I can manage to handle most of the potential pit falls along the way.

Vick is different than Rory. He doesn't ever seem to expect much in the way of attention from Gale. It's not that his brother has ever ignored him. He is just different than my other children. He is less intense somehow. He takes what Gale (and I) can give him when he can get it, but he seems to shrug off the lack when it doesn't materialize. It hurts my heart sometimes to think that I've raised a child who seems to expect to fade into the background, but he and I have talked. He doesn't see it that way.

There is an awful lot going on inside that little head of his, and I've come to learn that he doesn't share the majority of it with anyone in this house. His laundry runs got longer again after the people from the Capitol had left us alone, so I have my suspicions that he doesn't always bottle everything up inside. Still, it worries me to know that he has to go to someone outside our family to spill his secrets. I also wonder what kind of trouble he may be getting into (some of the phrases he uses didn't come from anyone in this house any more than they came from the District school). I keep waiting for a message from the Mayor's house requesting that my child cease loitering on their property, but it never comes.

My Gale is hurting, and I can't fix that. My grandmother used to say that if life didn't bruise you, it wouldn't be living. I'm not denying the accuracy of her wisdom, but it isn't overly comforting when you are watching life bruise your child. It isn't all from the Games; it isn't all from Katniss, but that supplies an addition that doesn't help matters any. I know my boy and going to the mines was never going to be an easy experience for him no matter what circumstances were when the time came.

He never complains. He never comments. He doesn't talk about the mines at all. I wish he would. I wish that one day he would just take a few minutes and rant and rave about everything that he hates about the mines. I wish he would come out and say that his father died there and he has to think about that every time that he takes the elevator down into its depths. I wish he would say that he misses the woods and the air and the lack of confinement. I think it would help just to say it all out loud just once. If he would admit that it isn't what he would have chosen if he would ever have been allowed a choice, I think it would make it better.

Instead, he pretends. There is never a discussion of the mines. There is only the talk of what our priorities are for the paycheck. There is never a mention of missing being able to spend time in the woods. There is only the talk of how quickly he will have to move on Sunday to squeeze in everything that he thinks he needs to do. His twelve hour shifts leave him exhausted, and he sits with Posy cuddled on his lap for a few minutes at night before she goes to bed as the only sibling interaction that he has any energy for. That, experience tells me, will get better. He'll get more used to the hours (even if he never recovers from being shut out of the air). He'll have more to give his brothers in the way of attention after he has adjusted.

For now though, he just doesn't have anything else to give. And he shouldn't have to; giving to them is all he does. He doesn't question where supper comes from on most days. We don't talk about the fact that it comes from Katniss. It bothers him. It hurts his sense of responsibility even though we both know that were things different, the Everdeens would be receiving the same from him. We don't mention Katniss. We haven't since the first Sunday that she rejoined him in the woods. He came home muttering about change and differences and an awful lot of use of the word can't. He looked at me and said straight out that it wasn't fair, and we haven't spoken of it again. My hates change boy has had far too much in the way of changes. I let him have his space for now.

That will eventually have to change. He can't go on like this forever - pretending that the mines don't bother him, using his Sundays to pretend that it's just him and the same Katniss going to the woods like always, pretending that Rory is still young enough that he'll get around to teaching him how to help someday. It will have to change, but it won't have to change today. Today she is going away again, and I won't add on to his reminders that things won't ever be the same. Today I will cook beaver stew and not mention who brought it over. I will plan for the days ahead when she won't be around to run the snare lines, and I will decide which of the carefully hoarded items from Parcel Days to break into first without mentioning why we have them. It's not the same, but I'll let him cope with that in his time for as long as I can.


	2. Chapter 2

(Mayor Undersee)

After I recovered from my hysterical outburst (as much as it pains me to admit that I had a hysterical moment, what else could that bout of inappropriate laughter be called), I tried to accomplish some semblance of work at the Justice Building. That went about as well as you might expect. There were multiple visitors from the Capitol in the District, but none of them found their way to make their usual inquiries about curios. This was a get in and get out event. They were all focused on Katniss and Peeta.

They were gone before evening. There would be none of them staying in any of our guestrooms tonight; they all went back on the train on which they arrived. So, I wouldn't be abandoning my wife and daughter to their company if I didn't go home. I could sit and brood in the Justice Building with only the usual amount of guilt attached to the exercise, but I decided against it. It didn't matter how I answered memos or what records I produced. None of it mattered. What was coming wasn't going to depend on or be countered by anything that I did. I just wanted to be with my family. So, I went home.

I found Madge in my office. She was curled up in my chair with a Capitol newspaper spread out in front of her. I tried to chide her; there had been people from the Capitol present, after all, but she leveled a look at me that spoke very clearly of her disappointment that I could think she would be so careless.

"They've all gone," she offered before turning back to her paper. "You're home early." It wasn't an accusation (although it would have been fair enough if it had been). It didn't even have the air of a question about it. It was just a simple statement of fact. It wasn't even all that early unless you compared it to the weeks in which I had made sure no one was awake before I came home and the nights on which I hadn't come home at all.

"Yes," I agreed unsure of how to proceed with the conversation and deciding to let her set the tone.

"Mama's sleeping," she told me. "There's a plate from supper I could heat up for you."

I started to tell her that she didn't need to do that, but I caught the way that she was peeking at me from over top of the paper.

"That would be nice," I agreed.

She dropped the paper and stood up with a smile. "We can watch the Victory Tour teasers together."

I have not been so caught up in worries over my own District and concerns that the fact that there is trouble in some of the other Districts has completely escaped my attention. There is a bit of an edge in the reports that lets you know that the officials are wary. I'm not the only one who has been tense. I have, however, been so caught up in my own worries that I haven't paid those bits and pieces of news as much attention as I should. If I gave them any thought, it was that maybe they were providing enough of a distraction that the reeducation of District 12 might be being placed on a back burner. Madge, it seems, has been paying more attention.

This becomes obvious to me as I sit eating my supper at the desk in my home office while my daughter continues her apparent in depth analysis of the paper. The television is broadcasting the rerun of the highlights of the last of the Games. That is what the Capitol is watching tonight. When it is over, they will run a compilation of their video footage from today as a segue way into beginning their discussion of the Victory Tour. Madge is ignoring the television at the moment. Either the newspaper is simply that engrossing, or she doesn't feel like rewatching her friend battle for her life. I would hazard a guess that it is the second (there's never much in the way of engrossing in a Capitol paper unless you have an obsession with gambling and are studying up on odds).

"Is this what they've been waiting for?" She asks me without any prelude.

I merely lift an eyebrow and wait for her to further explain her question.

"The Victory Tour," she tells me with a slight roll of her eyes as though she thinks I'm being purposefully dim. My daughter may be calm and rational, but she is still a teenager. Sometimes, the attitude makes itself known. "Are they waiting for the Victory Tour to see if everything calms down?"

Despite what I am certain that Madge thinks, I am not being deliberately slow on the uptake when I take a long pause before I offer her an answer. It takes a few moments for what she is asking me to align itself with the bits of news from other Districts that are tumbling around in the back of my head. I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of that at all, but she may be on to something. That doesn't, however, explain why she's trying to figure it out (or what she thinks she's going to be doing with the information if she does).

"Madge . . ."

"Let's not pretend anymore, Daddy," she says with a sigh. "Don't you ever get tired of pretending for everyone in the District? Can't we just not pretend at home?"

I actually blink at her in shock. "Sweetheart, there are things that . . ."

"That you don't want me in the middle of, that you want to protect me from, because I'm your little girl. I can't be mad at you for wanting things to be that way, but it isn't the way that things are. You already know that I know things. I already know that you're scared. Why don't we just talk about it instead of tiptoeing around it all the time and hiding in offices pretending that we're working?"

Ouch. I deserved that, but it still stings to hear the words coming out of her mouth.

"Please?" She's using her pleading eyes. It isn't fair for someone who wants to be treated like a grown up to resort to the trickery of a four year old in order to get her way. The problem is that she is right. I know that she isn't completely ignorant of the situation that we are heading into; I know that I haven't been coping as well as I could. The question is whether she is safer as far on the outskirts as I can keep her or with as much knowledge as I can give her. The answer isn't what I want it to be. I want her to be far, far away from all the ugly things that are coming, but she won't be - she isn't blind. I want her to not be curious and keep her head down and out of the line of fire, but she won't be - she cares too much. I want her to be far, far away from the world that is Panem, but she can't be - there's nowhere else to go.

I could try to strike a balance. I could try to tell her some things but keep some of the worst away from her, but I don't think that that will work. She's too bright for her own good. It's dangerous to ask questions in Panem. It's dangerous to wonder. And she'll do both whether I include her or not. It's safer, I decide, if I'm kept in the loop of what she's questioning and wondering.

"Madge, sweetheart, the last time that we had a Victor . . ." She doesn't let me continue.

"There's no need to go back that far, Dad," she tells me with an expression on her face that I'm not certain I'm categorizing correctly. "I know all about that."

I'm trying to assess that statement. She might think that she does, but she can't possibly. That's not the kind of information one picks up from schoolyard gossip. There would be no one to tell it. The whole District behaves as if they have forgotten. My daughter is looking at me with a somewhat stern expression with just a hint of pity touching her eyes. I don't like that look. She's the child; I'm the parent.

"Did you really think that I didn't know what happened to Grandfather Donner?" She asks me. I had. It had never occurred to me that she would know. Such things are not the things of which children's bedtime stories are made. There's a resolve in her expression - a determination to make me understand that I shouldn't be shielding her, that she doesn't need shielding. She just wants me to be willing to share with her what I know. I, however, am lost in the sudden thought that I may have nothing to tell her. She may know more about it all than I do.

* * *

(Hazelle)

The fluffy bits of white that drift peacefully from the sky are deceptive. The flakes may look pretty as they fall, but there is nothing pretty about what snow means. Snow means that the weather has gone cold. It means that month after month stretches out in front of me in which the additional burdens of winter have to be met to take care of my children. It means that money must be found to buy coal to keep the house from being too cold - never warm. Warm in the middle of winter when the snow is coming down is beyond what we can reach. I've never had that. My children have never had that. A chilly house in the winter time is all that they know. A freezing house in winter time is something that they have never experienced either, and snow means that another season of struggling to keep it that way has come.

The temperature that comes with the snow means that things that can be allowed to slide by in the summer time must be reprioritized. The children have to have shoes that keep the slush that comes from dozens of feet trampling through snow mixed with coal dust out of them. They need sweaters and hats to block out the cold.

The days go darker and that means candles to use because laundry doesn't stop just because the temperature drops. And I'm grateful for that. If my laundry work faded with the end of fall, I don't know how we would get by. Snow covers things. Cold kills off plants. Winter means a lack of things to gather. It means animals that disappear until the spring. There's less from the woods to feed the children and more money needed to spend on things that aren't for eating. Winter is harsh. Snow is harsh.

When it comes down in earnest, it blocks everyone in. It shuts things down. It means we have to rely on what we already have in the house to get by until the blanket of white outside the door stops smothering the world and lets us leave again. Now that Gale is in the mines, too much snow means no paycheck. It's been such a short time, but we already count on that paycheck. Gale is safe from the Games, and that means he is no longer collecting tesserae. The grain and oil may have been meager, but replacing it for five people is not an insignificant amount. Days with the mine shut down will do us no good.

Rory won't be doing the replacing. Some children might resent that. They might resent that they traded chances on their lives to help out their family but their siblings don't have to do the same. Gale is not one of those. He will do anything he can, anything he has to to make sure that that doesn't happen. I can tell that last year's Reaping still haunts him (and not just because of Katniss). I can see it in his eyes sometimes when he looks at his brother. It's Prim Everdeen that he's thinking of. He's thinking of how careful Katniss was; he's thinking of all the ways she tried to shield her little sister. He's thinking of how it didn't work because Prim with her single slip in all the thousands was still the one whose name was called.

He's thinking that he can't do what Katniss did. He's thinking that he's too old to volunteer to take his brother's place. He's thinking that he would have to watch, helpless, as his brother climbed up on that stage. He's unguarded in those moments when I can tell that the worry has caught up to him. Everything he is thinking shows in those eyes of his. I can see it, and Rory can as well. Rory saw it the first and only time (not so long after his birthday) when he asked if he should go sign up. There will be no more discussion of Rory adding to his chances.

Posy is stationed at the window chattering at no one and everyone about the snow that is falling for the third day in a row. She finds it pretty and fascinating, and it keeps her occupied for hours. I'll admit that I lost track of her detailing of its charms somewhere around the point where she was telling us all that it made the ground look like a cake that the yellow haired boy had brought for Prim when she had been playing there one Sunday afternoon. I had stepped in to hush Vick who was declaring that she had been told "eight thousand times already" what his name was. They settled down and I was thinking of other things rather than listening to the steady hum of my youngest's contented observations as she waited for her oldest brother to make it home.

I don't find anything pretty (or fascinating) about the snow. Snow makes me melancholy. I'll admit that it's worse now than when I was younger. It was snowing when they told me that my husband was lost to the mines. I don't think that I let it show too much. I keep my thoughts on the subject to myself. I let Posy prattle at the window with an indulgent smile. I remind the boys to take their shoes off at the door when they make their way back from school. That's the only communication that the littler ones and I have in regards to the snow. What would I say to Gale? He knows that winter is harder every bit as much as I do. We don't have to say it out loud to know that we both know.

We have always managed to get by in the winter. We have always planned for it. We have always been as careful as we could manage to be. The temptation to buy extras when things were going well was always tempered with the knowledge that winter would come back around again. Just because we have always managed doesn't mean I ever forget how close to the edge we hover. There are reminders all around me. Every family who buries a child because the house got too cold at night or because there wasn't enough at meals to go around pushes me that much harder to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can. Every mention of tesserae from neighbors or people passing by me on the street reminds me of what happened the last time I was unprepared (and all the years that Gale was at extra risk because of it). Every flake that is distinguishable as it adds to the pile outside the window is a reminder that life does not become less harsh just because it is covered over with what some would consider pretty things.

Pretty things cannot always be trusted. Snow is one of those things. Gifts are often another. Everyone in District 12 knows what the girls who visit the Head Peacekeeper at night give in exchange for his gifts. Everyone ought to know that the items we received on Parcel Day came at a cost. I'm not about to give them up, but that doesn't mean I don't remember that they came at the cost of the lives of 22 children. I'm a practical woman, and I know when to keep my thoughts to myself. That doesn't mean that I don't think them. It also means that I remember that the gifts from Parcel Days will come to an end. Some people forget that, or they seem to anyway. And I wonder if part of their price is losing a bit more of yourself and letting yourself think that the Capitol can be trusted to take care of you if only you play their Games their way.

The houses in the Victor's Village are pretty and comfortable and warm, but they come with a price. Anyone who has ever seen Haymitch Abernathy should be able to tell you that. Anyone who caught a glimpse of the baker's boy's paintings in the dizzying montage of pictures from the start of the Victory Tour that they played on the television should recognize that. Anyone who saw the unnatural, giggling Katniss acting as though she cared one whit what the dresses in front of her were made from should know. And anyone who overlooked the sweeping, romantic music that they played over the scene of those two falling into the snow long enough to realize that he lost his balance on that fake leg ought to be able to see.

Rory's new shoes and Vick's jacket and the sweater that Posy is swathed in are all pretty things, but they all cost my Gale being shut up in the mines. That we've decided that they are worth it doesn't change that. Pretty things always cost - even when it's snow.


	3. Chapter 3

(Mayor Undersee)

Sometimes, it's the things that I have seen coming for ages that take me the most by surprise when they happen. It's like the mines. Everyone knows that mining is hardly an accident free industry. Everyone knows the litany of things that can go wrong. Everyone knows, in theory, that the miners are tunneling under tons upon tons of rock that depend on a delicate structural balance to prevent them from coming crashing down. We all know, so it really should be expected when the inevitable occurs. But it isn't. It takes us all by surprise. It leaves us all shocked. Because, I think, we fall too deeply into the habit of thinking that this won't be the day that it does.

I've been waiting for so long to see the results of our Tributes' rebellion against the rules the Capitol has laid down that it takes me by surprise when the flurry of chaos comes.

There was no slow build up. There was no gradual increase in frequency of reports that led to something massive. It simply was. It started with District 11 and moved forward from there. It was like watching some sort of strange map that traced the path of the train that the Victors from District 12 were taking from District to District as each place they left behind was engulfed and consumed as they left it.

It was predictable even. The regular television broadcast of each stop on the Victory Tour would be followed by an officials' only broadcast of an update telling of unrest. The reports were not equal in their degrees of concern. Some Districts received only mentions of watching the population for signs of unrest. Others reported actual incidents that had been swiftly dealt with and had seemingly settled the others back down. Others displayed a situation where each incident seemed to lead to another incident and another no matter how much force the local Peacekeepers used in their responses.

And always, always the reports reminded those of us charged with authority within our own Districts that our lives would not be pleasant if the Capitol were forced to take more drastic action. There were reminders of 13 scattered throughout the reports. Executions and displays of Peacekeepers "controlling" unruly crowds were dwelt upon in detail, and the underlying questions were always left implied but never spoken.

"Do you see what happens? Do you see what you will make us do? Is this what you want for your people? Is this what you want for your children? Do you want to see blood in your streets? Do you want this destruction? For what? What could you possibly gain? What could be worth all of this?"

Or, maybe, those questions weren't implied in the broadcasts. Maybe they were just inside my own head. Maybe they were haunting me everywhere that I looked because I could think of little else as the Tour made its way on the path that would eventually lead it back to District 12. They would end up here, and where would we end up because of it?

I stopped my long hours at the Justice Building. There was no point. The memos had stopped. Whatever game they had been playing with them had come to an end. Whatever they were going to do had already been decided. I might as well wait for its revelation with my family close at hand.

Besides, a Madge home with or without me was a Madge ensconced in my home office watching and studying and drawing her own conclusions. It was best if I was there to try to exert some sort of influence. Her mother was sleeping more often than not. As much as I now understood that in a lot of ways our daughter had raised herself, she needed a parent right now. Knowing things (no matter how detailed the stories her grandmother may have filled her with) is never the same as seeing them for yourself. I lost the battle to keep her out of my office, but I wasn't going to let her watch those things alone.

"So they don't teach the Capitol history either?" She asks me one night after a report on District 3. I should be more used to the questions that she pipes with seemingly out of nowhere by now, but she always seems to catch me at my inarticulate best.

"What?" I question trying to draw some sort of a line between what we had been viewing and the odd observation that she seemed to have made from it.

"They don't teach real history to the people who grow up in the Capitol," she says nodding her head in agreement with herself. I get the impression that she's talking more to herself than she is to me. "Not the history from before anyway. They can't. If they did, they would understand that they are handling this all wrong."

I'm trying to figure out what she means by history from before. Before the Games? Before the last rebellion? Or before Panem? She didn't have that much time with her grandmother, and she was far too little to take in much in the way of massive history instruction, wasn't she? I'm starting to wonder if she has some source of information besides stories from her childhood, but part of me is afraid to ask. I don't know anything about before Panem except that coal mining started then, and everyone in the District knows that. Madge is still speaking, but I'm more convinced than ever that what I'm hearing isn't for me. She's letting all the thoughts that she's woven together in her head come out so that she can see if they still make the same level of sense to her when they are spoken. The way her head keeps nodding implies that she has decided that they do.

"They're so scared of history, of what might be used against them, that they've crippled themselves from learning from previous mistakes." She looks pleased, but I can't figure out what there is in her words to be pleased about. Her head tilts as she looks back at the once again beeping television. She studies it for a moment and the pleased look about her remains despite the violence that plays out in front of her. "And the sand keeps slipping through their fingers."

I start to ask her what she's talking about. What does she even know about sand? It's not something that she's ever seen anywhere off of a television screen. I don't get the chance. She's slipped out of the room while I'm trying to choose my words, and an appropriate moment doesn't appear over the next couple of days.

She walks her mother into my office on the night of the interview with Caesar Flickerman. My wife has never stepped foot in my office before. She doesn't make a habit of watching Capitol broadcasts. She hasn't been out of her room in two weeks. Everything about the situation should seem wrong; it should all seem out of balance with what our lives are. It doesn't. The three of us sitting together, watching, and telling each other what we are thinking seems nothing but right. I don't have any illusions that it will be often repeated. I can see that my wife is losing her battle. This is a special occasion. She's making a memory for Madge to hold on to when she can't have her anymore. She's trying hard to focus on what she's seeing. She's doing her best to keep her thoughts straight and give Madge responses that make sense. It's hurting her to do it. It's exhausting her to try to keep up. She's pale and her voice is strained. She's in pain, but she's ignoring it. She hasn't taken any medication. She's trying to give Madge time that is just her without any artificial substances standing between them. Madge knows. He sees it in the careful way she arranges a pillow behind her mother's back. They share a look over his wife's shoulder, and they both know that the other understands what this moment is. There isn't any reason to say the words out loud.

We watch as a family as the boy proposes to the girl. We watch as she accepts in front of a screaming, cheering audience that somehow have themselves convinced that the moment is all about them instead of the couple on the stage. Sadly, they aren't wrong. It is a show for them. It's a show for everyone who won't let go of those children even though they already survived their time in the arena. A moment that should have been allowed to be about the two of them, a moment that should have been private can't be because the living don't ever really get to leave the arena.

The President makes an appearance, and my eyes jerk from the screen to my daughter who has let lose a stream of invective against the man hugging her friend that would be quite enough to create a charge of treason, and her mother has a hand pressed to her side as if to hold her ribs still will she laughs quietly at the spectacle. She sees my face, and her laughter stops. She raises a hand to my jaw and makes sure that I'm looking her in the eye.

"Let her," she admonishes. "Let her say it while she can."

* * *

(Hazelle)

I run an appraising eye over my younger three before we leave the house. We'll do. I would avoid subjecting my children to the cameras again if I could, but it isn't an option. At least the food will be good. Normally (if such an extravagant celebration could ever be considered normal for District 12) we would never have been making an appearance at the Mayor's home. We are, however, still considered family to one of the District Victors. That means that we are invited to the dinner welcoming them home the night before the Harvest Festival. If you can call it an invitation. Invitation implies that you have the option to turn it down.

We will be going. That's why we are dressed in our best (Reaping Day clothing) and preparing to trek through the snow so that we can be videoed looking happy that my children's "cousin" has returned. I'm choosing not to think about the cameras and all the ways that it feels as though we've just gotten rid of them. I'm thinking about the food. I'm thinking about how, for once, I won't be the one preparing it. I'm thinking how the children will go to bed tonight full (Rory likely with a stomach ache that I won't begrudge him because I know how very unlikely it is for that to happen again in the future that I can foresee).

I'm thinking that I'll have to carry Posy. The snow will brush off the boy's pants, and they will dry quickly enough. Posy's dress is different, and she's little enough that having her walk through the snow wouldn't be best in any case. Gale won't be able to do it. He isn't home yet from the mines. He'll clean up and join us later. I would prefer that we all go together, but we were asked to be sure that we were on time. Gale didn't object. I won't be surprised if he manages to come up with some way to skip the event altogether. He isn't in the best of moods. He hasn't been since the broadcast of the proposal. It's another change. After all the changes that have been thrown at him lately, he's responding by digging his heels in harder with each one. He went straight to bed after the broadcast aired, and he hasn't spoken to me since (except to tell me that we shouldn't wait for him to get home from the mines before leaving for the dinner because that would make us all late).

I've given him space. I've tried to let him sort out things on his own. If he is foolish enough to skip out tonight when he knows the cameras will be rolling and someone might notice that part of Katniss's "family" didn't bother to attend, he and I will be hashing out some things whether he is ready or not for it to happen.

We don't even have to make it in the front door to be able to smell the food that is waiting for us inside. It hits us as we come up to the yard. Rory's stomach gives an audible growl in response. He's twelve. My children eat well for the District in which we live. (I can't speak for the other Districts.) That doesn't mean that there aren't still times when they are hungry. Filling up a near teenage boy that is going through a growth spurt doesn't come easily. He ducks his head in embarrassment, and I reach over to squeeze his shoulder. He looks up at me and gives a sheepish grin. I smile back at him.

Vick is looking up at the house as if he's nervous about going up to the door. "I've never gone in the front before," he whispers. We stand in a small group looking at the bustling house as if it has become something intimidating instead of just a building. Posy is the one who breaks the moment. She knows we are going to eat dinner, and her only experience with eating at someone else's house is going over to visit Prim.

"Will there be cookies?" She asks as she wriggles tired of being carried. I shift her to a better position against my hip and nod my head toward the door to get the boys moving. There are a few frowns sent in the direction of the snow that we are knocking off of our shoes, but no one says anything. We are brushed off, someone comes after the boys' hair with a comb, and we are ushered into a room and showed the place at a table where we are to sit when it is time.

Posy is fascinated by the flowers that decorate the tables. That keeps her busy and means that I don't have to sit on her to keep her from running around. Rory and Vick are talking to Prim who is excited to be seeing her sister soon. Ari and I exchange nods of greeting, but she doesn't seem to be interested in any sort of conversation. The two of us rarely are.

The Mayor's daughter enters with someone clearly from the Capitol in tow. The woman is talking a mile a minute in a semi-whisper that I can't make out from across the room. She seems to be talking just to hear herself talk because she doesn't notice that Madge Undersee is surveying the room while she listens. Her eyes rest for a moment on Posy who is balanced standing on a chair while she leans across the table to examine the flowers more closely. A smile flits across her face, and she turns to say something to the chattering woman who has paused (I can only guess to breathe). She must have been paying enough attention despite her surveying of the room to say something appropriate because the woman looks pleased and launches into another round of words. The girl turns her head again and catches Vick's eye. They share a smile, and Vick mouths something to her that I can't see. Madge slowly shakes her head, and I see Vick roll his eyes. Madge gives him a last grin and turns to give her full attention (or at least what looks like it) to the still speaking woman.

I look back at Posy and the pink dress that she is wearing. It isn't new. It has a bow across the back made from a thick ribbon. There is an overskirt that rustles when she moves. Posy loves it. It isn't practical to have such a nice dress for a child that is still growing, but she needed one for tonight (and this one was offered). I pull her down before she climbs completely on top of the table. More officials enter and find their places, and the formal entrances of the main guests begin.

The food is good, and it feels as though it is never ending. Katniss looks better than she did in the broadcasts of the Victory Tour. She had been looking progressively worse as it went along. I don't have much experience with makeup, but you can cover circles under someone's eyes all you like - worry still shows. Something changed after the proposal. She looked different after she had accepted the President's congratulations. All of the clips of her at the Capitol party that are playing on the television that has been placed in the far corner of the room where we are dining looked lighter - as if her shoulders had lifted and she wasn't having to work so hard to stand up anymore. I don't know what shifted. I don't know what changed.

I just know that as she hugs her sister, exchanges greetings with various officials, and leans toward the baker's boy while she eats there is something about her that feels much different than anything I have seen from her lately. It strikes me that she looks like she did back before the Games - a child who is still weighted down with too much responsibility, but one who knows what it is that she has to do. She's found some sort of a purpose.

My wayward son slips in late and seems to be making sure that the cameras catch him sitting next to his siblings. He slips out again once the reporters seem to have grown tired of broad room shots and have returned to a sole focus on the Victors. I didn't see him eat a bite. I don't think he and Katniss made eye contact the entire time.

Gale made an appearance (albeit a short one), Rory did give himself a stomach ache, Vick may have eaten half his weight from the dessert trays, and Posy's head was filled with pretty things for her to talk about. The cameras didn't follow us home. I could hope that this was our last appearance as "cousins." I could hope that we were finally leaving the chaos of being closely involved with the Capitol behind us, but something told me that I would be wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

(Mayor Undersee)

There was a time that quiet made up the background noise of all the lives in our home. There were quiet footsteps, quiet voices, and quiet notes of music from a piano that filled up our days. The background noise that fills our home now is that of beeping. It echoes in the otherwise quiet of the second floor even with the door to my office firmly closed. It was designed that way. It's supposed to attract my attention. It's supposed to bring me to see whatever it is that has been deemed a priority for me to know. I don't think it was ever intended to be used as frequently as it is being used now. I don't think it's stopped for fifteen minutes together since the Victory Tour train left the Capitol. Riots in District 8, unexplained explosions in District 3, and attacks on Peacekeepers in District 4 are all heralded by the beeping that is filling up my life.

The Victory Tour is ending, and we are up to our ears in Capitol visitors as a result. Our home has been taken over by teams of people setting up and decorating and carrying in food and table settings and food and video equipment and food. Therein is the only redeeming quality of the moment. The Victory Tour must have its big finish. Whatever is coming will come once the cameras have gone away. For this year's Harvest Festival, the people of District 12 will know what a Harvest Festival is intended to be.

My wife and daughter are the only people I've ever been comfortable soliciting an opinion on the matter from, but I wonder, sometimes, if it ever occurs to others in our District how ridiculous of a concept a Harvest Festival is. There is no harvest in District 12. There are scattered gardens tucked in tiny yards scattered around, but they aren't the stuff of which the origins of a Harvest Festival are made. There are no "on" and "off" seasons in coal mining. There are no reasons to celebrate the end of an intense period of hard work for which you will be rewarded with a bit of time during which work will go at a slower pace.

We celebrate the Harvest Festival because it is an occasion that the Capitol has dictated that we celebrate. The only other "holiday" of sorts that we are allotted is the Reaping. Some people acknowledge New Year, but it isn't the half day at the mines that the Harvest Festival is. So, families scrape together a meal with whatever extra touch they can manage and call it a celebration. My wife's mother always insisted that we have a pie made with pumpkin for the occasion. She said that you had to have a nod to tradition (and that you couldn't count on turkey). I hadn't understood that at all, and my wife had told me early on that it was some sort of a reference to a holiday from before Panem came to be.

I hadn't asked questions after that; I always avoided conversations that could lead to before Panem with my mother-in-law. It wasn't necessarily forbidden, but it wasn't the safest topic either. And that woman always seemed to dwell on the details a little too much - as if the Donners had appointed themselves some sort of keepers of history that the Capitol would prefer we forget.

There was a time that I thought that that family legacy had ended with Mrs. Donner. My wife had never displayed much of an interest. I know better now. I know that it had just skipped a generation and been entrusted to Madge. Not all of it, I was sure (because she had still been so young when her grandmother had gone), but I was certain that my daughter knew more than she probably should. I had made as much peace with that as I was ever going to, and I didn't mind it so much when it dealt with things like the Harvest Festival.

Madge was not, however, currently appreciating the fact that this year's Festival was not going to be one in name only. She was as distracted by the beeping as I was, and she was frustrated by it as well. With all of the people from the Capitol filling up the empty spaces of our home, she couldn't invade my office as had become her habit and get her fill of the news of what was going on outside of our borders. She was cut off by their presence and equally blocked from asking me any questions about what she was missing.

She had taken to wandering rather aimlessly around the house watching the preparations. They could have been quite intriguing if you were the sort who was intrigued by models of efficiency. The transformation of the space that would serve as the dining hall was actually quite impressive. The official dining room of the house could not begin to hold the number of people that we were expected to entertain - prep teams and stylists and District escorts would have nearly filled the table on their own. That didn't even count the three Victors and the families and my family and the District officials who all had to be made to fit somehow.

The Mayor's house has been designed to be more than a just a house, however, and sections of one of the walls of the dining room fold back to open into a larger room that is normally a space for visitors from the Capitol to keep the extra luggage that they all seem to come with that couldn't possibly be shoved into the small guest rooms that they are assigned. When Madge was very little, she used to ride a tricycle around and around the space when there were no visitors to clutter it up with all of their things. I'm fairly certain that I heard a raised voice this morning demanding to know what had been done to the poor floor, but I managed to sidestep that conversation.

It doesn't look like a storage room any longer (and it doesn't look like the playroom of a lonely little girl). It is filled with tables with centerpieces and china and crystal. There are candles and starched napkins and a television screen in the corner playing a never ending loop of clips of the Victors making rounds of the party in the Capitol. I'm not sure why. I don't know if they think they are making this party feel grander by including the scenes or the people who have been sent here to set this all up are feeling cut off from "civilization" and want a reminder of more elegant things. Either way, I won't have to be watching the screen.

I'll be seated in the dining room proper with my wife (who insists that she will be well enough today to attend) and my daughter and the Victors plus four Mellarks and two Everdeens with the crowd of cameras sitting in the space between us and the diners in the other room. The man who seems to be in charge of the takeover of our home said something about creating a small family feel in the midst of the broader experience. I excused myself politely and let him get on with it. I wouldn't care even if I weren't dwelling on the what comes after of the party.

I've been notified that the Victors have arrived, and I'm on my way down to do a last look over of the set up (it was the man from the Capitol's idea, not mine) when I nearly bump into Madge coming up the stairs. She's muttering under her breath about Capitol invaders, and I give her a stern look in response. She shrugs her shoulders and inclines her head toward the currently otherwise empty stairway. My look doesn't change. She smiles at me and makes a show like she's locking her lips shut and tossing a key over her shoulder before she goes up on her tiptoes to kiss my check and continues on her way. I really can't tell if she thinks that was a cutesy way to defuse my frown or if she was being serious. I am once again reminded that my daughter is a teenage girl and as such has facets that I will never understand. As long as she keeps herself away from my office and keeps her opinions to herself while we are drowning in . . . well . . . Capitol invaders, that's all I can ask for tonight.

I make the (apparently) required appropriate praises of the taste and design and execution of said for the man downstairs. That I'm praising the taste of a man who thought that orange tipping on green hair in combination with a yellow suit was an appropriate choice for his evening wear is not lost on me. The fact is that I don't actually have to reach as far for appropriate small talk with someone from the Capitol as I usually do. Whatever his personal appearance preferences may be, the tables do actually look quite nice. The settings are simple, the lighting succeeds in adding a "cozy" as he called it feel to things, and the floral arrangement center pieces may be a little over done, but their colors are muted and not overpowering.

That is the point in my thinking where I realize that he is sucking me in, and it is definitely time for me to flee. I plead the need to get ready and make my way up the stairs. It isn't my daughter that I encounter this time; it's Katniss. She's hovering in the hallway of the second floor looking a little rattled and as though she's about to start pacing. I remember that she isn't allowed to see her family until the dinner actually begins, and I assume that she's looking for a distraction to fill her time. I exchange a bit of small talk and shoo her in Madge's direction. I know my daughter won't mind being interrupted while she's getting ready. She could use a distraction to fill her time as well.

The infernal beeping starts up again and I close myself in the office wondering how many bulletins I have managed to miss in the time that I was offering pleasantries. It's nothing really new although the intensity of some of the scenes may have increased. It's still escalating. It's going to keep escalating until something big enough to blow out all of the resentment and frustration occurs. It's just a question of how many casualties there will be in the process. It's not a happy note upon which to go down to dinner.

* * *

(Hazelle)

The pounding at the door nearly makes me tip over the tub of laundry that I'm working on finishing. It's frantic, and I feel my heartbeat pick up its tempo in response as I mentally tally the locations of my children. The girl that stands on the other side of the door gives me no reason to think that I shouldn't be focusing on the only one not currently crowding behind me in a startled pack - Gale. It's the only word that I make out at first in her jumbled rambling. She's breathless, but that isn't the only thing that's preventing me from understanding her. She's petrified. I try to place her and realize that she was a neighbor to the Everdeens before they relocated to the Victor's Village, but that's as far as my brain gets before I manage to make out more of the words that she's trying so hard to stay. "Took to Mrs. Everdeen" is the part that I make out first. "I'll stay with the kids" is the second. The only reason to take Gale to the Everdeen's is if he is hurt, and if someone has been sent to both inform me and offer to keep the children away, then he's hurt badly.

That's all that I can think of as I rush through the snow that is starting to fall in larger flakes all around me as I travel as quickly as I can to a part of the District with which my feet are not familiar. My baby is hurt. My baby is hurt badly, and I can't move any faster. Why can't I move any faster? It's like the day I lost my husband all over again when I felt like I was moving so much slower than everything around me as I tried to make my way to the entrance where I knew that he should be reappearing. Then, I had been pregnant and hindered by the extra weight. Now, it was the increasingly heavy snow that was causing my feet to slide. There was always something in my way. I needed to be faster. I just needed to be there. I needed to see what had happened. An accident in the woods? A wild animal that was too desperate to be frightened away? My mind is conjuring all sorts of possibilities and their ramifications, but none of them are the correct one. What I see when my sliding, slipping feet finally get me to my destination is not anything that I expected.

He's laid out on the table of a house in the Victor's Village, and there's something so unreal about the circumstances of the situation that it takes my mind a few moments to come to terms with what it is seeing. His back is as shredded and tattered as a piece of cloth that simply couldn't survive one more trip through the washtub. There is blood. There is so much blood. What could do that? Then, the memories hit me as sharply as a knife to my stomach. I know what could do that. I've seen it before. Never this close up, but I've seen it before. It's been so long. We've felt so safe. I won't be feeling safe anymore. I know what's torn my child's back to pieces. He's been whipped. There hasn't been a whipping in so very long that we've stopped thinking of them, and my child has gotten to be the reminder.

I reconcile what I'm seeing and allow myself to sink onto a stool that someone has placed beside the table. I lock eyes with Ari Everdeen for a moment, but I don't think she really sees me. She's somewhere else entirely, and I am grateful for it. I've never not trusted her when it comes to treating my children. This is the right place for Gale to be. She'll do whatever needs to be done. Just like me, just like everyone else in the District just enough older than our children, she has seen this before.

Knowing that someone else is working on the treating part, I let myself focus on comforting my child. He is unconscious, so I instead focus on comforting myself. I hold his hand and lean in close and watch for a few moments (or maybe minutes or maybe hours, I'm not in any state to tell) to reassure myself that he is breathing in and out. Once I'm confident in the rhythm that tells me that he is as all right as he can be for the present, I bring his hand to my lips and kiss it in relief.

He's breathing and unaware as Ari works on his back - that's all I can ask for for now. It doesn't last. He stirs and makes the sort of noises that I never want to hear coming from one of my children. I don't want him to wake up. It's too soon for him to wake up. I remember what it was like. I remember the hushed, whispered stories. I smooth his hair and whisper that I love him. I tell him to relax. I tell him just to breathe. I know the words are worthless. I'm not even sure that he will hear them through the pain.

I don't catch most of the words - I'm too focused on Gale and my so very inadequate attempts to make it better, but I hear Katniss screaming. If I weren't so focused on my child, I would shut her up myself - preferably with a slap across her face. I'm angry at the moment already as I watch my child in pain, and I don't have any tolerance left to spare for the child who is yelling and causing a commotion and distressing Gale further and distracting everyone from taking care of my baby. The yelling comes to an end, and I don't care what they've done to her to get her to quit. I'm just grateful that it has stopped.

Ari and Prim continue to work around me and manage to get Gale to swallow something they've mixed without sitting him up. They leave the room after a while, and I'm left to keep my vigil. He's in so much pain. I offer every comfort I can think of and it isn't enough. It's not nearly enough. He's so strong. He's been so strong for all of us for so many years, and I have to hope that he's just a little bit stronger. He has to be strong enough to make it through the worst of the pain, because I can't lose him. I can't sit and watch him in such pain that he can't cope and watch him pass out of this life with agony the only thing that is reaching him.

So, I whisper. I plead. I say words that he isn't even hearing, but I hope that the meaning somehow seeps through and strengthens the resolve that my child has always had in abundance. I use everything I can think of that might make it through the haze of the pain. I whisper of Posy and how her world revolves around her big brother as sweat breaks out on his skin from the effort he's making. I whisper of Vick as he grinds his teeth together. I remind him of promises of teaching Rory about the woods as blood wells up on his back as the newly replaced skin shifts from the tension in his shoulders.

I keep holding his hand, and I keep talking because it's the only thing I have in my power to do. Ranting and raving will do nothing, but reminding him of why he has got to fight his way through this just might.


	5. Chapter 5

(Hazelle)

"Posy needs you; Posy loves you. Vick needs you; Vick loves you. Rory needs you; Rory loves you. I need you; I love you. It will go away; it will get better. You just have to stay with us. You can't leave your brothers and sister behind." I say the words over and over again. I hold his hand to my heart, and I lean close to his ear desperate for the words to get through.

There's a pounding in the background. I'm so focused on my whispered pleading that at first I think it's the combined sounds of our heartbeats - my baby's and mine. His is pounding with all the stress of fighting the pain that he is feeling, and mine is pounding with the strength of my fear that I'm not getting through to him - that my efforts are futile. Then, I realize that the noise is coming from outside the little world of his pain and my fear. It is the sound of a troop of feet heading toward the door. I register another sound. It is a ringing noise that keeps repeating - it's a bell. The Everdeen house has a doorbell, and someone is using it impatiently. Someone is demanding entrance. Someone has come here through the snow. All I can think is that they've come to finish what they started.

My grip tightens on his hand as I try to think of what, if anything, I can do to stop them from taking him away. They can't take him away (except that I know that they can). I don't have long to wonder, and I don't have to attempt a defense of my son. Whoever it was who was at the door has not come to take Gale away. They would have come bursting in by now if that were the case. There would have been raised voices and angry words. Instead, Ari returns (the others following in her wake) with a small vial clutched in her hand. She doesn't waste time or bother to explain what it is that she is doing. She pushes a needle into the vial and then pushes the needle into Gale's arm. I watch the clear liquid disappear, and I watch Ari settle back on her heels and look expectantly at his face.

It doesn't take long for me to see what she is waiting expectantly for - his teeth stop grinding together. His shoulders sink into a more relaxed position. The sweat that has been pouring off of him ceases to do so. Ari offers me a small smile, and I return it with a grateful one of my own before I go back to staring at my Gale. It's as though the pain is melting away from him just like the snow earlier melted into puddles on the Everdeen's kitchen floor.

Someone asks the question that I would be asking if I weren't so busy enjoying the sight of my child out of pain. Ari says that it is something from the Capitol, and it occurs to me that I should wonder where it came from - I'll think about that later. All that matters right now is that Gale is out of pain. All that matters now is that his breathing is steady and his heart is no longer pounding. I can feel it from the way I'm still clutching at his hand. It's peaceful now. He's peaceful now. He's drifting off to sleep. And I can't help but worry that it isn't going to last.

So, I stare at him intently making sure that I'm really seeing what I'm thinking that I'm seeing. I count his breathing and watch the last vestiges of tension leave his face. I watch for any sign of the pain returning; I watch for any sign that he is in distress. I close my eyes for a moment and reopen them to make sure that I hadn't been hoping so hard that I have imagined his relief. Nothing changes. It really happened. It's really working. My baby is better. My baby isn't in pain. I can breathe again.

I barely register the voices that are talking quietly around us. I haven't paid them much mind since Ari offered her explanation of what it was she had given Gale. Someone is saying something about Gale selling strawberries, but that doesn't make any sense. I dismiss it and stop trying to pay attention to any of their words. None of them matter.

At least, none of them do until the voice is Ari's right at my shoulder telling me that she'll make up the bed in a guestroom for me to sleep in tonight. That is enough to break my contemplation of my oldest. He isn't my only child. He isn't the only one I need to worry about. There are three others at home who don't know what is happening. There are three others at home worrying about their brother and wondering if he is okay. I can't stay.

I want to; I don't want to let him out of my sight, but I have other obligations that are equally important. I can't let them suffer in suspense. I decline Ari's offer. I can trust her to look after him now that he is better. (I push back the voice that whispers now that I know that he's not dying; I don't want those words in my thoughts.) You can always trust her with the physically injured. I have to get back to the others.

The snow is worse; I can barely see to make out the path. It's coming down faster and thicker and it's likely that we'll all be snowed in by morning. I keep walking even though I know that that means that I may not be able to get back to Gale for days. I have to trust him with the Everdeens because he has the Everdeens. Rory and Vick and Posy don't.

The snow makes it difficult to think of anything but making sure that I'm not losing my way, but I have other things that I need to think about. I have to decide what I'm going to say to them. I have to decide how much they need to know. Posy is easy. The hard part will be getting her to be okay with the fact that Gale isn't home. She will accept it when I say that he's hurt but getting better. She'll just want to know why she can't take care of him herself.

Rory and Vick are different. We'll have a little time because of the snow, but people will talk. There will be whispers at school. There is no hiding from them that their brother has been beaten. They will have to know. In a lot of ways, they need to know. They've always known that what their brother does in the woods isn't something that they are supposed to discuss around the District, but they will have to understand how much more important family secrets are going to be now.

They need to be prepared. I never wanted this for them. I wanted the memories of the years after the Second Quarter Quell to remain my memories. I never wanted them to experience what it is to be in a District where the Peacekeepers are determined to follow the letter of the Capitol's law. It's coming. It's started. We've gone back to that world.

I'm cold and drained and fighting the snow, but all I can think of is blood. There was so much blood to be seen in the District in the years after Abernathy won. There were bloody lips and blackened eyes when the Peacekeepers thought someone was getting in their way. There were bloodied hands from the miners who had been worked harder than ever. There were bloodshot eyes of the parents who were up nights desperately thinking of how to keep their children as safe as they could. There was blood in the square so many, many times - the mother of the tribute who was trying to shield her remaining child, the ones who took the whippings, and the ones who were shot. There was so much blood all offered in payment for being a District who had managed to raise a Tribute who hadn't done what they wanted in the way that they wanted when they wanted it done.

We had paid and paid until finally, at last the Capitol had been satisfied enough to loosen their hold. But they wanted us to pay again, because we hadn't been broken enough. And the Capitol always requires its payment in blood. There would be all of the things she remembered; they would all become her present instead of her past. There would be blood all over the District again. It would be the same, but it would be different. Because, this time, the blood that had started the flood was her son's.

* * *

(Mayor Undersee)

It's been months. I've waited for months trying to figure out what they would do and when they would do it. I've worried and fretted and wondered. I was right about them letting the cameras leave before they struck. The cameras went away, and I went back to waiting. I wasn't waiting for long.

After all of that waiting, I knew nothing until it was too late to do anything constructive. I don't know if there was any way that I could have issued a warning or not. Whether or not I could have doesn't matter. Whether or not I would have chanced it is nothing more than a philosophical exercise. Whether or not I would have been listened to is a moot point. I wasn't given an opportunity. I received no notice. There were no memos informing me that District 12 was about to have a new resident. There were no curteuosy phone calls. The first hint I had that a new Head Peacekeeper had arrived didn't come until after he had already turned the status quo of my District on its ear.

The Hawthorne boy was already being moved and the crowd that had gathered to watch the whipping had already scurried away from the scene before I even knew that Cray had been replaced. I had barely five minutes after my frantic and nearly hysterical housekeeper (from whom I had never before heard so many words in all the years in which she had worked in my home) had spilled out as much of the story as she knew (between breathless gasps demonstrating how much the run to the Justice Building had taken out of her) before a thunderous looking Romulus Thread appeared to formally introduce himself to me.

The interview wasn't pleasant. I never liked Cray. I don't think it was possible for anyone to actually like Cray. I don't think it was possible for any man in the District with a daughter to not despise him. That there would come a day that I would be wishing that I was sitting having a lengthy session about District affairs with that man would never have occurred to me - until today. I would have been grateful to have to work with Cray within three minutes of meeting Head Peacekeeper Thread. He will never be referred to in District 12 by merely his last name. He will always be referred to by full title - Head Peacekeeper Thread. The chance of slipping and making a mistake with his name in his presence out of habit or being overheard being less than respectful by the wrong person would be too great. Even the children will learn quickly that even half-whispered mutterings should include the reference to his position.

I knew all this before he had finished explaining that he was Cray's replacement. It was in his manner and bearing; it screamed for recognition from his tone of voice and choice of words. This was not a man who would be lax. This was not a man who would even be practical. This was a man who would take whatever punitive action against us that the Capitol decrees. That is what I saw in those first few minutes. He will enjoy it. He will find ways to expand it. I have seen his kind before. Having established that there was nothing that he said that caused me surprise. I expected every sneering word and semi-veiled threat. Our reckoning with the Capitol has begun.

He spent three hours in my office, and we were not coming to an agreement about how best to work together to ensure a peaceful and prosperous future for District 12. I was actually taken by surprise by the length of the interview. I had expected him to offer dictates instead of explanations, but he seemed to enjoy dwelling on the details. He offered lists of infractions that were not being "adequately discouraged" and details of changes to the square that he will be personally overseeing. At the end of the three hours, he informed me that I would be joining him to meet the train that was bringing his staff. It was after we got there that I realized that our entire contingent of Peacekeepers was being replaced. There will be no familiar faces left come morning. The District will be left at the mercy of those who have never learned to build lives here - who have no recognition of the faces of those to whom they will be dishing out lashes and sentences to the stocks and shots to the head. And there is no mercy in Panem.

I was freezing by the time I was dismissed and allowed to return home, and it was not only because of the time I had been forced to stand out in the rapidly falling snow. It is becoming a blizzard out there, and most of the District will be trapped in their homes for at least a day by the time it all lets up. The District 12 that they lived in when they retreated to their homes at the start of the storm will not be the same District 12 that they will live in when it comes to an end. There will be nothing that any of them can do about it. There will be nothing that I can do about it. We are all trapped in District 12 just like we are trapped in our homes by the snow. We can only wait for the snow to end, and we can only wait for the Capitol to dictate the courses of our lives. Pushing back is as futile as trying to push the snow back up into the sky. The Capitol is like the weather. They both do as they please. They are both beyond our ability to change. They both destroy without remorse.

Romulus Thread is here to remind us of that, and he won't be employing words as he does so. His lessons to us will be visual ones. The horror that those who had not seen such things before must have felt when they witnessed today's beating is only the beginning. The snow may have covered over the blood that was left in the square today, but there will be more to take its place. There will be much more to take its place, and that won't even be the worst of what we face.

I have managed to thaw out my fingers (I know I can do nothing to end the sense of coldness that I'm feeling inside). I've got the tea kettle boiling, but that won't fix what is wrong with me. I'm making tea anyway because it gives me something to do while I figure out how to begin the conversation that I need to have with my daughter. I should maybe see if my wife is awake. It might be better if we have this talk all together. Then again, it might be worse. Trying to explain what is coming is going to be a trigger for her. It might be best to let her remain ignorant for as long as I can. I don't know for sure. I never know for sure.

I'm knocked out of my pondering by the sound of the kitchen door opening behind me. I spin around not sure what I'm expecting to see and find my daughter covered in snow and shivering as she pulls the door closed behind her.

"You're home," she says sounding pleased. I don't share her pleasure. What was she doing out in this weather? She should have been safely upstairs in her room (or keeping her mother company) not running around in a winter storm in a District that has become more dangerous than she has ever experienced.

"What have you been doing?" I demand stepping forward and knocking some of the snow off of her shoulders.

"Turning into an icicle," she says with a frown as she strips off her coat and gives it a shake that leaves a melting mess on the floor. "I'll have to mop up later."

I'm unimpressed with the flippant answer that she gave to my question. She cannot traipse all over the District. I can't not know where she is. There has been too much of that, and it isn't safe anymore. The Peacekeepers will be watching. They will be looking for reasons. (I ignore the fact that if they decide that it is the course of action that they want to pursue that they won't actually need any reasons because I can't do anything about that at the moment.) Her life is going to have to change drastically, and it's going to start tonight. She'll be in good company. The whole of District 12's lives have changed drastically tonight. I repeat my earlier question making sure that my tone makes it clear that she is to take this seriously.

"What have you been doing?"


	6. Chapter 6

(Mayor Undersee)

There were so many conversations with my daughter in the weeks after the new Head Peacekeeper arrived that didn't go the way that I wanted them to go. The state of the District is beyond my control. Apparently, the way my Madge's mind works is equally unchanged by anything that I say.

"It was Gale Hawthorne today," she said to me that first night of the blizzard when I was trying to get her to understand the seriousness of the risk she had taken. "It will be someone else in another few. Then, it will be someone else and someone else and someone else until the whole District is caught up in it. I've told you. I know about last time. I already know what's coming."

"Knowing and experiencing are not the same thing," I had chided frustrated with my inability to make her understand (and her inability to just accept what I was saying because I was saying it).

"I'll learn," she said in such a soft, serious tone that I knew I couldn't accuse her of not grasping what was at stake.

"I don't want you to learn!" My frustration had exploded.

"I don't think that's an option anymore." I hadn't been able to respond because it was too painful to admit that she was right.

We had watched the construction in the square from a hidden vantage place - she had conceded to my insistence on that point.

"They think we're a threat," she had calmly observed as I watched a combination of nightmares and my memories be hammered into place.

"No," I had insisted. "They want to remind us that we can't be one."

"Or," she had countered. "They might be showing us that we have to be." She was thinking of things (dangerous things) that weren't going to happen. It didn't matter that she didn't seem inclined to listen to me; I was going to have to say something to make her understand. It hadn't been the time - not there outside the relative safety of our home. I had waited for an opportune moment that took longer than I liked to appear.

"Those people in the square scattered as soon as the reality of what was happening hit them," I had reminded her of a previous conversation about the whipping of the Hawthorne boy. "They aren't going to fight back, and they would be slaughtered if they did."

"They're being slaughtered every day that they don't," she had told me with some sort of pleading visible in her eyes. I didn't want to see whatever it was that she was pleading that I understand. She was the one who was in need of understanding. "It's not different just because it's slower."

"It's a lot different," I was determined to make my point. "It's the difference between going out to get yourself killed and giving yourself a chance to survive until it's over."

"Over?" She had asked never losing the calm quality of her voice that I had once cherished as a sign of her level headedness and had now learned to dread as proof of how immovably stubborn she was. "What over would that be? The one where we all go back to waiting to see whether we get to go off and die for other people's entertainment, or the one where we all go back to making sure that we never say what we're thinking out loud because we aren't allowed to think things without getting their approval first?"

I had given up on trying to reason with her for some time. I changed instead to setting boundaries for where she was allowed to go and what she was allowed to do and what people she was allowed to interact with and what she was allowed to talk about when she did.

"The new Head Peacekeeper means business. The people under him mean business. Things are different now, and you cannot continue to act as if they are the same."

"It's not different - not really," she had told me. "It's all the same things that they've always done. They just made them so obvious that we can't pretend not to notice them anymore." She had reassured me that she wasn't ignorant. She knew how to be invisible when she needed to be. She didn't promise that she would follow the directives I had set. I noticed that even if she thought she had sidestepped the issue.

"When, then?" She had demanded of me when I had told her that this was not the time to try to change things. It was the first time, in all of the conversations, that she had lost her temper. "We go through the Games and the Reaping because you never fought back. You went through the Games and the Reaping because your parents never fought back. It goes all the way back to the ones who first signed that treaty. Everyone just lets it go on because there's always a better chance that it isn't your child. So, everyone just lets it go because it could be worse. Just because it could be worse doesn't make what it is okay. Just because the odds are that it is somebody else's child doesn't make it any less somebody's child. It's always somebody's child. We're supposed to grow up and let it go on and think that it isn't worth fighting against because it will just be somebody's child. For how long? How many generations are we supposed to let it keep on going before someone stands up and says enough is enough? How many generations are we supposed to let suffer through this just because a group of people didn't have enough courage to die for their convictions when it mattered?" She stood in front of me taking big gasps of air and watching me with accusing eyes.

"You don't understand," I told her still in a bit of shock from the venom of her tirade.

"I know I don't," she had agreed. "Are you telling me that right here, right now if the Capitol called and told you that it would all be over, everything would go back to the way it was before, and all you had to do was give them me that you would tell them yes? Would you?" The demand echoed in my ears and the only thought that I had was that it wasn't a fair question for me to be asked.

"Madge . . ."

"Don't you tell me you've never thought it," she had interrupted before I could talk. "I've seen your face when you're reading the Treaty of Treason every year. You don't understand them either. You think it was despicable that they ever even thought of signing." Her voice changed then. It became less angry, less demanding and more pleading.

"But, don't you see, we do the same thing. Every year that we let it happen; every year that we decide that whatever little measure of safety they'll offer us is worth handing over to them a couple of more children we're doing the exact same thing that the original signers of the Treaty did. We just pretend that we're better than them because we grumble about it to ourselves when no one is looking."

She had shut herself up in the room with her mother after that, and we haven't alluded to the conversation since. She had less anger when she realized that the Capitol was cutting us off from the food supply that we depended on shipments from other Districts to receive.

"So, they're what?" I had overheard her asking her mother sounding every bit the teenager that she was as she pronounced the words. "Going to starve us into submission? And suddenly one day they'll bring the food back and everyone will forget that they were the ones who stopped it coming in the first place? And we'll be so grateful that we'll pledge our undying loyalty and adopt an appropriately reverent attitude toward their beneficence?" I barely caught the whispered response that my wife made, but I could hear the humor in her tone (and I resented her for being able to find amusement in the precarious situation that our daughter was thrusting herself in the middle of).

"You're sarcasm is leaking out, my baby girl."

"Yeah, well, I'm crabby today," Madge had replied. They had laughed softly together after that, and I hadn't made my presence known. I wasn't going to intrude in their moment. My opinions wouldn't be welcome, and I was coming to terms with the fact that Madge wouldn't be having many more comfortable moments with her mother. Neither of us will.

It doesn't matter what I say; it's like the words just drift over her and float away on the wind. I have to do what I can to protect her in spite of her. There was something that she said back when they burnt down the Hob that comes back to me when I watch her these days.

"It's just a place," she had whispered. "It may slow things down, but it won't stop them. People will keep going. It'll all just be more scattered and harder for them to track. It was risky though - for them to light that kind of a fire in the Coal District. It might just jump out of their control."

It might not be the way that she intended it, and it may not apply to District 12 as a whole. But, it describes her perfectly. They lit a fire in my Madge, and it's out of my control.

* * *

(Hazelle)

I attack the building in the Victor's Village where Haymitch Abernathy spends his time (I will not call it a home because it isn't one, and I will not use the word house because I do not believe that it deserves to be called by any name that implies that someone is actually dong any sort of living there) with all the frustration and rage and sorrow that I have built up over the weeks that I have watched our family's life crumble around us.

I scrub at the floors on my hands and knees until my back aches with the effort while I think about my son who is nothing short of trapped in the mines. The hours are seemingly never ending, the pay is a mere portion of what it was before, and even cursory nods to the safety of those traveling down into the earth are no longer existent. There are days when he moves wrong or bumps up against something and the scarring on his back reopens and once again oozes blood. It hurts him. He doesn't say so, but I can tell. He doesn't swing Posy up into his arms the way the he used to. He won't admit it, but he can't.

I rub my hands raw over tubs and tubs of laundry of clothing that hasn't seen soap in years. I attack stains that have likely been set in since before Rory was born, and I let the anger that I feel over his signing up for tesserae find a release in the friction that I create in the pieces of fabric. I let the flush from the hot water and the stinging of my eyes from the caustic cleaners I am using cover up the fact that I am crying for my baby who was never supposed to find it necessary to add his name to those rolls.

It's worse somehow than it was with Gale. I cried the day that he signed up as well, but it wasn't so unexpected. It had been discussed and argued and talked to death until we had all come to the conclusion that there was no other way. We walked him to the Justice Building. He let me hold his hand on the way home. He wasn't alone.

Rory went behind all our backs. He disappeared one afternoon and came back to make the announcement. He was defiant and proud. He demanded that we recognize that he was old enough to share the burden that Gale and I had carried for so long. He broke his brother. I'm not sure that he knows that he did. It doesn't ease any burdens to add a child to the tesserae roles - it just changes what kind of burdens we bear.

It's worse because his sacrifice hasn't bought what it was supposed to buy. The tesserae grain isn't what it is supposed to be. So much of it is unusable or not there at all. It's like watching them demand a sacrifice and then watching them laugh in our faces as they don't keep their end of the bargain. It's demeaning and it's unjust and it's unworthy of my child who was willing to conform to their rules of what he was allowed to do to better his siblings' lives.

And it bothers me more (in so many ways) than even seeing the whipping post and the stocks. I can find nothing in me but hate (not frustration or fear or worry or rage) when I think of the way that they are mocking my child's sacrifice. When it comes to our children, haven't they demanded sacrifice enough? Not for them; never for them. It's never, never enough.

And the windows are spotless and the baseboards all shine from the work of my hands pouring out the sense of loss in my soul for my Vick who has gone quieter and more withdrawn than ever. He's watching, watching, watching from behind widened eyes as each new hurt is inflicted. My sensitive one holds on to all of the sights that he never should have seen, and his eyes become more guarded with each one. He starts more easily at every unexpected noise as if he is waiting for what will happen next to him, to us. He especially watches Gale. His eyes track his older brother all around the house as if he is expecting him to disappear from view.

I've caught him slipping portions of his food onto Posy's plate more often than I can count. "I'm her big brother too," he told me when I asked, and he didn't need to say anything else. I understood what he wasn't saying out loud. He sees so much, and he takes it all to heart. He sees Gale and all that he gives; he sees Rory frustrated and hurt that his plan of taking out tesserae isn't working. He's placing on himself those same burdens that his older brothers have, and he's taken the only action that he has yet found. He'll keep looking; he'll keep searching. And someday it won't be something so innocuous; it won't be something so easily caught. I'm afraid of what he might come up with and of what trouble it might get him into. So, I polish silver, and I knock down cobwebs with a little more force than is strictly required.

I scrape at dishes that are covered with mold in combination with whatever was originally on them. I scrub and I rinse and I dry and I sort and I organize and I turn the kitchen into something that resembles a kitchen, and I try not to think about how scared Posy is all the time. She doesn't understand. She doesn't know what it means. She doesn't know why so many things that have always been a part of her life don't exist anymore. She only understands that her brothers are worried. She understands that Gale isn't her Gale. She understands that Rory's smile never reaches his eyes. She understands that Vick is distracted. It scares her. Her brothers aren't what her brothers have always been to her, and her response is to be afraid. She clings and she hovers and she flinches every time she sees the uniform of a Peacekeeper because she knows that the hordes of them arrived at the same time that her brothers changed and her mind connects the two even though she doesn't know how correct she actually is.

I don't share the disappointment of most of the District when Parcel Days come and go without the relief that so many were hoping to have. I've always remembered that they would go away, and the manner in which the Capitol has been dealing with us didn't leave much room for hoping that it would be later rather than sooner. I've always known that the things we haven't earned are so easily taken away, but it is still hard to come to terms with those things that are ours (the ones that we have earned) being so easily taken from us as well.

There is nothing that the Capitol can do to us that I find surprising anymore. I only feel the hurt and the frustration and the fear (and the hate when I think of my Rory). It feels worse than the time after the Second Quarter Quell. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it just feels that way for me because I have children to worry about now.

So, I wage a war on the building in the Victor's Village that is filled with muck and dust and mold and things that are in need of eradication. I make the stains and the dirt and the trash my enemies, and I unleash the instability of my emotions upon them (ignoring the words of complaint and the whining and the sometimes belligerence of the man I am technically doing it for while he copes with his lack of alcohol). I win the space back item by item and corner by corner and battle by battle until it all bows to my control with the war ceded in my favor.

I needed the housekeeping work for so many reasons. It keeps my children (at least most of the time) fed - not full (no one in the District is full anymore unless they are wearing a Peacekeeper's uniform), but fed. But it also gives me something that I need for myself. It gives me a battle to fight that I can win. It gives me a way to work out all of the words that have been building up inside of me with no outlet that doesn't end with me in the square.

It's much easier to bite them back down (and I can't afford to do anything but bite them back down) when I have a battle that I am capable of winning at hand to pour everything into.


	7. Chapter 7

(Mayor Undersee)

District 12 is dying.

Madge wasn't wrong when she claimed the people were still being slaughtered even if it was happening slowly. We are the Coal District, and coal is not something we can use to bring aide to the starving. The scattered goats and pigs and the carefully saved for the winter odds and ends that were scraped out of the pitiful little attempts at gardens are not enough to sustain a District that deals only in coal.

We have been cut off from the things that are shipped in on the Capitol trains (which is pretty much everything). There are reasons above and beyond simplicity of classification that the Capitol confines each District to a specific industry. We quite literally need them. Without the flow of traffic of the goods that they allow from one District to another, we cannot take care of ourselves. All it takes is a combination of delays and cancellations of shipments to bring us to our knees. They wouldn't have even needed the extra Peacekeepers.

It is part of my paperwork in my capacity as mayor to sign off on each death certificate for a citizen of District 12. The Peacekeepers bring them already filled in with whatever cause of death they feel will reflect best on the official District record. They do not determine a cause of death; they do not investigate. They decide. We can't escape Capitol directives - not even when we die.

I dutifully sign my name knowing full well that the words like "sudden illness" and "exposure" cover for other answers - answers that are not allowed to be. (I wonder, at times, who it is they are actually lying to with their forms that no one believes.) I read the name of each person who passes. I know the story (both official and the real one that I have learned to piece together from reading between the lines) of every child whose name is passed across my desk. The names come more quickly with every passing week.

I find myself wondering (morbidly) when it is that they will have decided that they have won. This can't be to curb the unrest in the other Districts - most of their residents will never know of anything that happens in 12. Is there a percentage that they are looking to thin our numbers by? Is there a set point of suffering that they wish us to reach? Do they want District 12 to survive at all?

What would they do with an empty District? They may have decided to forego having 13, but can they really do completely without coal? Will they bring in settlers to take our place? Will they find an alternative that allows us to remain a barren place - a newer reminder to the others not to challenge them (even unintentionally)?

At first glance, the District we starved to death doesn't seem to carry the same sort of factor for intimidation as the District we bombed into oblivion. I imagine most of the residents of most of the Districts have at least a passing acquaintance with the concept of starvation. It's easy to get a little bit callous and think that the idea of someone starving is the lesser of the two when you are comparing the fear of them both. It's when you can't get away from it; it's when you are still reading the names in your sleep that it seems a more terrifying proposition than the quicker end that they chose to provide to 13.

What will they do next time (and one look at my daughter tells me that a next time will always come back around)? In fifty years or two hundred when someone messes up their Games? In three generations or five when someone stands up and says no more? Will it be District 11's turn to be sacrificed? 10? 9? 8? Until they've dwindled down to nothing with nothing left to hold?

District 12 is dying, and my wife is dying as well. She knows. Madge knows. I know. None of us say it out loud. We don't need to say the words. We don't need to acknowledge the inevitable. None of us want to waste her lucid moments talking about things that we cannot change. She is becoming less lucid with every passing day. I am losing her at the point that I am the most lost when it comes to taking care of our daughter on my own. I don't know what to hope for anymore - whether she rallies enough that some semblance of her remains with Madge and myself until the end or whether to hope that she continues to sink so that she is spared the realities around us.

Which do I want more? Her comfort or our child's? Some days that answer is easy. Some days I'm no longer sure. I should be used to missing her. Our life together has always been riddled with holes when she couldn't be present with us. There have always been the times that she was lost in her own head with the pain and the things that haunt her. I shouldn't be so unready to do without her entirely. All those years should have gotten me ready, but they didn't. They just made me rely on the times that she was really, truly with us even more.

It may not matter; the entire District may go with her. We may not have to do without her presence, Madge and I. One wrong move, one wrong sentence, or one wrong choice might have a Peacekeeper ushering us on our way. I wish that I could be sure that wouldn't happen to Madge, but I no longer exist in a world where I can make guarantees. There is no sensible rhyme or reason any longer. They could kill her to punish me because the District they are so angry with is my responsibility. They could kill her to punish Katniss because two socially isolated little girls found their way to a lunch table together so long ago. They could kill her for no reason at all - because she's a part of the Districts and the Districts are all under their control.

* * *

(Hazelle)

My oldest would brand me a traitor if he knew what went through my mind when we first realized that the fence was being powered full time. I was relieved. It was one burden taken off of my shoulders. I couldn't bring myself to think of it in any other way.

I may mourn for Gale that his feeling of being trapped is complete. I may sympathize with Rory that his dreams of things settling down and him spending days in the woods with his brother are crushed. I may miss the help that the land on the other side has offered my family over the years. I may even allow myself an internal flinch at just one more move from the Capitol designed to tell us how helpless to resist them we are.

I am still relieved.

They may think that they have done something extra to crack down on the "lawlessness" of District 12. They may think that they have masterminded some crushing blow to the ones who breached the fence in the first place. Maybe they have. I'm not of the mindset to notice.

All I can think of is how relieved I am.

Gale has not ventured beyond the fence since he was caught with the turkey by the new Head Peacekeeper. He hasn't been back since that man whipped him in the square. First, it was because he was too unwell. Then, it was because it was too dangerous. He couldn't get caught again. There is something in my child that is enamored with the woods and the freedom that it offers. He wasn't meant to live his life in a cage. But, as much as he loves the woods and all that they offer him, he loves his brothers and his sister more.

So, he stayed away from the woods. To get caught again was for us to lose him completely, and he wasn't going to risk that. The mines may be awful with pay that is meager, but he goes and faces it for them. He would not take a chance on leaving them behind without his contribution to their care. It was difficult, and there were days when it wasn't enough. He resisted the temptation of the woods because it still wasn't worth what would happen if they didn't have him at all.

Then, Rory came home and announced that he had taken out tesserae. My Gale broke in that moment. I saw it in his eyes. He thinks he failed him. He thinks that he let Rory down. Gale hates to fail nearly as much as he hates change. The goal of his life was to protect his siblings from the choices that he had to make. I see the admiration in Rory's gaze even if Gale can only see the anger. He's too broken right now to see that Rory isn't angry at him. He's angry at a lot of things, but his older brother isn't one of them.

He is angry that it didn't work. He is angry that Gale doesn't think of him as grown up enough to help do what Gale has always done. He is angry that he knows I don't approve of his decision. He is angry that he is still "one of the children" when he so desperately wants to be one of the adults. But, he isn't angry at me, and he isn't angry at Gale. He only wants to be allowed to help.

Gale is too enmeshed in guilt to see anything but that there is anger, and he believes that it is directed at him no matter what I say. He tends toward brooding, my Gale, and there is only so much that I can do with a brooder until he is ready to listen. I've dealt with a few in my time.

Just because he isn't listening doesn't mean that I am not listening. I hear the things that he mutters. I hear the thoughts that escape in undertones from his lips. I know what he is thinking. He is telling himself that he was being selfish. He is telling himself that he should have taken the risk. He is telling himself that he would have been careful, that he wouldn't have gotten caught, that he could have kept going to the woods and saved Rory the extra slips. He is telling himself that every time Posy or Vick or Rory go to bed hungry is another sign that he failed.

He's wrong. He didn't fail them. I would have tried to my last breath, but I don't think I could have kept them alive on my own. There were years and years and years where Gale was the difference that kept them alive, and it kills me inside that he can't see beyond the way things are now.

He didn't bring the Peacekeepers down on us. He didn't ruin the Parcel Day shipments. He didn't burn down the Hob or change the conditions of the mines or make the tesserae rations worthless. None of this is his doing, and he couldn't have stopped it. He's been angry at the Capitol for years, and I know he'll go back to being angry at the Capitol again - when his head clears, when he isn't so caught up in being angry at himself.

It's what he'll do in the time before his head clears that I'm worried about. It's what chances he might take and what risks he'll decide aren't that risky that keep me watching him so closely. I've been afraid that he'll decide to go. I've been afraid that he will be caught.

That's why I'm relieved. That's why I can think of nothing but how much better I feel when I find out that the fence will stay on all the time. They've taken away his temptation. They've taken away the chance that he'll do something desperate. They've cleared his head for him; he just hasn't realized it yet.


	8. Chapter 8

(Mayor Undersee)

I think you will find it reasonable that living in the situation in which I am living, I find that things which are unexpected are things which are no good. So, when my home is unexpectedly swarmed with visitors from the Capitol who were not scheduled to arrive for another three weeks, I am suspicious. I can't ask questions. Questions could cause trouble, but the majority of people from the Capitol that do the type of jobs (the nonPeacekeeper type anyway) that get them sent out to District 12 for anything that doesn't involve checking up on the mine can be counted on to be rather verbose. It isn't difficult to listen in as the camera crew and assorted others linger around an assortment of pastries in my dining room while they give Katniss's prep team time to "freshen her up."

Effie Trinket is reciting schedules, and I gather that they are only staying for as long as it takes to do a photo shoot of wedding dresses before they get back on the train and head back to the Capitol. It seems simple enough, except that it isn't. I send Madge off to school. (I could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she pondered whether or not she could make the trays from the table relocate themselves to the general vicinity of the school. It wasn't a risk worth taking while the camera crew was still gathered around them with cups of coffee.) Then, I leave for the Justice Building (I wasn't required for entertaining purposes as they were on such a tight schedule) and try to think.

There is no reason to suddenly move up this photo shoot. Unless, of course, President Snow thinks that the turmoil still occurring in select Districts is going to be calmed by exposure to a selection of fabric choices. (Sarcasm seems to be weaving itself into my thoughts more frequently these days.) Something is coming. I just can't figure out what it can possibly be.

There hasn't been anything new coming through the broadcasts. The beeping heralds the same type of information. Nothing is being shipped out of 4 or 3 or 8. I don't know what can have happened to make the taking of pictures in wedding dresses so essential that it had to happen now. I spend the rest of the day into the next morning trying to figure out what President Snow is plotting.

The announcement that there will be mandatory programming does nothing to settle my nerves. In fact, it only serves to reinforce my belief that something is about to happen. I go home in time to watch with Madge. She looks pensive.

"There's something else, isn't there? They can't really think that wedding dresses are important enough to order a mandatory viewing?"

It's nice to hear the question. It offers me confirmation that I haven't spent the last day being paranoid. We watch the series of choices for wedding attire flash by on the screen in silence for the most part - if Madge were a different sort of girl, she would be commenting on the options the Capitol has chosen for her friend. If she were that sort of girl, she wouldn't be Madge. She's too busy trying to figure out what it is that _they_ are attempting to gain. I hear one irritated, muttered comment having to do with "she isn't a doll" come from next to me on the sofa. My daughter is getting progressively tenser the longer it lasts. We're both waiting for whatever it is that is coming to be dropped on us.

When they announce the reading of the card for the Third Quarter Quell, I am confused. It makes sense for that to be required viewing, but what does that have to do with the wedding dresses? Why was it so essential that the pictures be taken before the announcement of whatever horrific twist is going to be put into place for the Games this year?

Madge scoots closer to me when the Second Quarter Quell is mentioned. I drape an arm around her shoulders for comfort. (It's nice to know that I'm still useful in some sort of a fatherly capacity; I've been beginning to wonder.)

"I'm glad Mama didn't get up," she whispers. We're thinking the same thing - her mother doesn't need any more reminders. She's been confused enough about when she is lately without mentions of her sister's death being shoved in her face, but there is something about the way that Madge says the words that makes me suspicious.

"Was she going to try?" I ask her.

"She said she had to work her shift at the shop, but I told her that she wasn't feeling well and should rest." She answers with a small shrug. "I told her I would cover it, and she went back to sleep."

I know what she isn't saying. Today was not a lucid day. Today she thought she was still a teenager talking to her sister. It's happening more often. Our daughter shouldn't have to deal with that - our daughter who is now staring at the television with a horrified expression on her face that seemingly came out of nowhere. I snap my head toward the screen and try to figure out what it is that is making her look like that.

I realize that I missed the reading of the Third Quarter Quell Card while Madge and I were discussing her mother. I play back the sound that was vaguely registering in the background during that time in my head and try to figure out what I have missed. The moving up of the photo shoot and the determination to give their Capitol audience their wedding dress screening before the reading of the card make perfect sense when what I heard actually clicks.

They have, intentionally or not, just proven that President Snow already knew what the supposedly sealed card said before he opened it on that stage.

"They're sending her back," Madge says turning to look at me. Her earlier expression of horror is gone. It's been replaced with an expression that doesn't bode well for what little piece of mind that I could hope to have left; it's been replaced with determination.

* * *

(Hazelle)

It won't be Rory. It can't be Rory. For this Reaping, at least, Rory will be safe. It's the first thought that breaks through the fuzziness that took over my brain as I tried to process the reading of the card for the Third Quarter Quell.

There had been chatter from Posy about Katniss and pretty dresses while Gale sank further and further into a glaring silence in front of the television. Then, there had been worry and fear as it was announced that the card would be read. We had been united (Gale and I) in stealing glances at Rory (who was sitting stoically trying to mimic his brother's aloof mask) as the build up to the words played out.

They have to make a show of everything in the Capitol. They have to clutter up everything with their ceremonies and unnecessary words and formalities. Everything has to be wrung out for every last drop of entertainment that someone in their world might find in things as ultimately insignificant as a girl's wedding dress to as gravely important as the demanding of another child's life. I was on the edge of my seat wanting them to get on with it so whatever it was that was printed on that card that was going to (potentially) lead to harm for my child would be known and also wanting them to shove it back in the box and not bother to torture us with knowing when there wouldn't be anything we could do about it but worry for the three months remaining until Reaping Day.

And, then, I wasn't looking at anyone or thinking of anything except that they hadn't come up with some new twist to make things more awful for my middle boy. They had actually come up with something that made him safer (or as safe as one can be in a District that the Capitol is in the middle of punishing).

It won't be Rory. It can't be Rory. The words roll around in my head as if they are waiting for me to latch on to them and really, truly comprehend what they mean. And I do. I blink, and I'm staring at my oldest who is looking at his brother with an expression on his face that is a mix of longing and pleasure and relief. Gale turns his head to me and makes eye contact. His eyes are glistening, and they are asking me a question. I nod my head in response. He heard what he thought. I heard what I thought. His brother's name won't be in the glass bowl at the Reaping this year.

We stare at each other for a long moment - sharing our relief at the lifting of one burden. We are united again for an instant in a strange sort of nearly lightheartedness. Then, his gaze darkens and hardens. His fists clench at his side. The reality of who is being exchanged for his brother's safety has come crashing down on him. I can see the emotions as they tumble around and anger is the only one that settles to the forefront. It's the only one that is safe. He can't be sorrowful that his brother is safe. He can't be relieved because everyone he cares about isn't. He can't be happy with the way things are turning out, but he can't be upset when he thinks of Rory. He can be angry. Angry is where he falls for safety by default.

"I have to . . .," Gale starts, but the words trail off as he turns to head for the door. I don't ask questions. I know where he is going. I don't try to stop him. I am otherwise occupied.

Rory has burst into tears.

He is sobbing and muttering, but I can't make out a word. Posy is looking at him with her lower lip quivering (as if she is thinking that if something has happened that has made Rory cry, then it must be something that requires her tears as well). Vick catches my eye and inclines his head toward his brother before taking Posy by the hand and leading her out of the room. She lets herself be led as Vick whispers in her ear - likely promising her a story. He'll settle her. I can focus on Rory.

I place a hand on his shoulder, and he launches himself into my arms. The muttering has stopped for now as he continues to cry - the deep, wracking kind of sobbing that leaves me worrying that he'll make himself throw up if he doesn't calm down soon. I rock him back and forth and make soothing noises. I don't know what to say to make it better because I don't know what exactly has set off this display of emotion.

We stay that way for some time - just my little boy (only twelve but usually so determined to be so grown up) and me holding each other while he cries his troubles out on my shoulder. The sobbing eases into something less that eases into sniffling that eases into stillness as we sit with his head still buried. He makes no move to pull away, and I have no desire to rush him. He'll talk to me when he is ready.

I feel his head turn, but he isn't meeting my eyes when I look down to where he is still leaning against me.

"Is it always like this?" He asks me in a voice that sounds so very young that it might have come from Posy. It's the sound of a child holding something broken asking his mother if she can make it better. Only, I still don't know which of the broken things in our lives he is asking me if I can mend.

"Is what always like this?" I inquire rubbing his back and resting my head against the top of his.

"Will I always be so happy that it isn't me that I forget that it is someone else?"


	9. Chapter 9

(Mayor Undersee)

"Training?" I ask her absolutely certain that I must have misheard what my daughter said to me.

"Training," she repeats with a small nod of her head.

"That's not allowed," I tell her as if that isn't a fact with which she is already familiar.

"Yeah," she says with a look in her eyes that betrays the fact that she thinks I am being unreasonable in my reaction to her information. "Because being able to use a sword is a genetic anomaly heavily present in the population of District 2."

I understand her point (though I could have done without the tone), but it doesn't change the fact that I'm still put very off kilter by this knowledge that the Victors of District 12 have decided to train for the Games. District 12 doesn't train. District 12 doesn't prepare for the Games. District 12 endures and sends its children off to die as unprepared children - not as well rehearsed combatants like the Careers that the people of 12 deride in undertones.

It occurs to me that part of my disbelief is caused by the fact that here in District 12 we equate how we treat the Games as the source of some sort of moral high ground in comparison with a place like District 2. We see their preparation as embracing the Games. Both Districts live with the realities of the Games, but we chose to ignore that they are whenever we can. The problem with that, of course, is that they still are.

And, now that my thoughts are straying down that path, it occurs to me to wonder whether I would have held the same distaste for the Career Districts so prevalent in my home if my daughter's name had been drawn the year that she was twelve. I wouldn't have. I would have been jealous. No children of twelve are sacrificed to the Games in the Districts we hold so little respect for - and maybe, just maybe that's why they seem to hold such disdain for us.

I shake off the thoughts. They are pointless. This isn't a philosophical discussion of the relativity of the application of morality. The Victors of 12 are training, and why shouldn't they? They are not innocent children who know nothing of death and killing. They know exactly what they will be facing. They know exactly what they are being dragged into the middle of in a way that the rest of us cannot. If they want to train, why should they not?

The answer, of course, is because they are not supposed to train, and our District is housing a Head Peacekeeper who seems to find unending sources of delight in the enforcement of any regulation he can find. This, however, seems to draw no notice from either him or the army of enforcers that have come to ensure the inescapableness of the Capitol's will in our District.

Things have changed since the announcement of the terms under which the Third Quarter Quell will be observed. I wouldn't say that things have improved drastically, but there is a definite loosening of the stranglehold in which we have been held. The shipments come on the trains the way they are supposed to, and the workers in the mines are not worked quite so hard (the concept of a day off is once again the norm). This, I suspect, is not by accident.

There is a message to be had there - a subtle one, but a message all the same. _They_ are telling us something. The Victors are going back to the arena, and the rest of our lives all take a small step back toward the way they were before our Victors stepped out of line. They've made a nice package of it - the troublemakers are going, and we should be happy to have them gone. They've even topped it off with a nice bow. Our children are safe for an entire year. What parent would ever not be glad of that? We are supposed to forget that the ones offering the gift to soothe our hurt are the ones who did the causing in the first place. Or, we are supposed to remember both and choose carefully which side we wish to be on the receiving end of - I can't quite decide which. I think it may be intended to be whichever one works.

Either way, it doesn't matter. What matters to me is that Head Peacekeeper Thread demonstrates no objection to the blatant preparations being taken by our Victors. Therefore, I have no reason to intercede when my daughter makes off with the Capitol newspapers from my office. I have no reason to stop her from making her frequent trips to the Victor's Village. If it makes her feel better to spend time there, then I will let her. She should feel like she has done everything that she could to help her friend. That may make it easier when she loses her. I'm going to have lots of experience in trying to make it easier on her to lose people soon enough.

Madge goes to the Victor's Village, and she spends hours in her mother's room even on those days when her mother isn't well enough to know that she is her mother. Sometimes, I join them. Sometimes, I let them have their time. Sometimes, I watch for an opportunity when our daughter is otherwise occupied, so that I can start the process of working through my own good-byes.

I understand why Madge splits her time between those places - what I haven't figured out is why the little Hawthorne boy who collects and delivers our laundry can so often be found in our home. I don't ask. She tries to take care of her mother, but we all know that her mother will not get better. She tries to take care of Katniss, but we all know that Katniss is beyond her care. If she wants to take care of someone for whom her care will actually make a difference, I don't have the heart to tell her no. It will give her something to focus on after the inevitable comes.

* * *

(Hazelle)

I don't wake up on the day of the Reaping because I didn't sleep at all the night before. This is normal for me. I always keep vigil. This year, with no child eligible, I should have been able to enjoy a night of peace, but I couldn't. I still had a child to keep vigil for - my oldest was supposed to be out of the reach of the Reaping this year, but it will hurt him just the same.

I kept vigil all night for Gale who is losing to the Games again and had months to know it was coming to build up the hurt in his heart. I cried for him in the darkness because he hasn't yet cried for himself. He has been angry and focused and grudging, but he hasn't cried yet. He can't. Crying will mean, to him, that he has given up, and my boy doesn't give up unless it is forced upon him. So, I cry the tears that he will not because I know something that he has not yet accepted - something that he may be so focused on his fight against change that he may not yet even know.

We are stationed toward the back of the crowd at the Reaping so that Gale can make a run for the Justice Building without the crowd getting in his way. It won't change things. It won't get him any extra time. The same few minutes will still be given to him and the Everdeens and the Undersee girl, but it makes him feel better to feel like he is doing something on this day where everything is out of his control. The other children and I will not be going with him. She has spent a few minutes with each of them while Gale was in the mines in the past week, and I know that that is the closest to a good-bye as she has for them. She and I understand each other, I think, and there is nothing else to be said.

I don't think there is a single person in the crowd (and I think even the Peacekeepers are included) that doesn't recognize the ridiculous picture that Effie Trinket makes as she tries in vain for several moments to scrape the single slip of paper out of the bowl with her overlarge fingernails when we all know what the name on the paper is. It is drawing things out for an unnecessarily long time when we all know that the only question of the morning is which of the men will be going. In what may be a first ever for the Games, those of us who are close enough to the situation to pay attention know that the name that is drawn out of the bowl will be the name of the person who will not be going.

There are no good-byes. The Tributes are not waiting for anyone in the Justice Building. They are on the train and on their way to the Capitol before the rest of us even realize what has happened. It is pointlessly cruel. There is no logical reason. It was done with deliberation to accomplish nothing but cause extra pain, and my child is one of the ones doing the extra hurting. I expect him to disappear, but I have momentarily forgotten that the woods are no longer available. He comes home with us and sits with Rory on the sofa. His hand remains resting on his brother's shoulder as if clutching on to the only thing he has left to be thankful for on this day.

Posy climbs onto his lap, and Vick sits by his feet. They huddle together - the four loves of my life - and even Posy senses that now is a time to be silent. My three younger children are gathered around their older brother offering him comfort the best way they can - by reminding him that he still has them. And because it is Gale, because I know how sacred he considers his responsibility as their older brother, I know that this latest hurt will not break him. He has always loved them more than anything else that he might have wanted.

He and Posy fall asleep together, and Rory and Vick slip out the door. I don't have to ask where they are going. Rory will be going to Prim. Vick will be going to Madge. I wonder if either one of them realize how like Gale that makes the two of them. The girls didn't get to say good-bye either, and my boys are off to try to offer comfort to the people they have decided are part of what constitutes theirs. These are heavy responsibilities on little shoulders, but I can't help but be pleased that they've learned to be kind in a world that so often seems to have little kindness for them.

There was a time when I would have stopped Vick from going, but his trips to the Undersee house have gotten so frequent lately that it seems normal for him to go. If they don't want him there, they will send him home. I've started to think that Madge likes to have Vick around in the same way that Prim likes to have Posy. Some people can only make themselves feel better by taking care of other people. Primrose Everdeen is like that, my Gale is like that, and it seems that the Mayor's daughter is the same. If Vick helps her, then so be it. I owe the Undersee girl. It isn't even payment because Vick likes being there so well - they have secrets he tells me, the kind that mothers cannot know.


	10. Chapter 10

(Mayor Undersee)

The people from the Capitol that are required to be present to make sure that the Reaping is recorded and broadcast do not linger this year. They are packed up and loaded on their train shortly after the Tribute Train makes its earlier than scheduled departure. I do not know whether the special new rules apply to all of the reaped Victors or only to those from 12, but there is nothing to be done about it (except to deal with the aftermath).

I am home incredibly early for a Reaping Day, but I have still been gone for long enough for my home to be overcome by chaos. The Doctor is with my wife and daughter when I arrive. He looks stern; Madge looks teary. My wife looks exhausted.

"Walk me out," the man tells me without preamble.

"What was it?" I ask complying with his request but really focused on getting back to the room that contains my family.

"She was having a seizure when Madge found her," he says while I stare at him trying to make sense of what he is saying. Seizures, in my experience, are something that happen to children with untreated high fevers (and something that we see upon occasion in the Games). My wife has headaches - crippling ones. She has never had a seizure. The District Doctor is looking at me with an expression that leads me to think that he is readying himself to deliver a lecture.

"I warned you that she would be getting worse," he reminds me. "This is part of the worse. She's deteriorating; it's only going to continue to go faster."

"What do we do?" I ask him.

"Do?"

"For the seizures," I say impatiently.

"You make sure that there is nothing in the way that can cause her further damage when she has one," he says opening the front door that we have arrived at without my noticing.

"Morphling?" I ask hopefully needing there to be something that I can actually do. I am filled to the brim with things which I can do nothing about. I need this to be not one of them.

"That won't help," he tells me. "She can still have it for the pain, of course, but it won't do anything for the seizures. I would imagine that they are going to get progressively more frequent. There's nothing that I can give her that will stop them. She'll be tired after each one. Let her sleep it off. Make sure she doesn't injure herself when they hit. That's all I can tell you."

"The Capitol has to have . . .," I begin, but he cuts me off before I can try to finish the sentence.

"They do," he agrees. "That won't help us. They have drugs that can help, but we would never get them here. Even if you could manage to obtain them, they have to be fussed around with to figure out the right balance for the dosage. They take time to build up in the bloodstream. It's a time consuming process, and your wife does not have time, Mayor Undersee."

I don't offer any sort of acknowledgement of his leaving. I scurry back up the stairs. My wife is sleeping. My daughter is holding on to her hand as if she will slip away from us if she lets go. It won't work. She's going to slip away from us no matter what we do.

I push Madge out of the house some time later. She needs to get out of this room and breathe. I'm willing to guilt her into going. That Primrose Everdeen may be sitting somewhere in need of comfort is the only thing that gets her to look up from her studying of her mother's sleeping face. That I want some time to talk to her mother alone is the only thing that ends her hovering by the door.

It makes me an awful person that I am hoping that the little girl is in tears when Madge finds her. It's the only thing that I can think of that will keep my child gone for any length of time at all. I don't want her sitting here the way that she was. She needs something to do. She needs someone to need her for something.

The fingers that I am holding in my own twitch at some point after Madge has left us. I look down to see that my wife's eyes are open.

"Love you," she tells me in a voice that sounds as if it is fighting its way through a haze of tiredness.

"I love you," I reply squeezing her hand.

"Confused lots," she says with her eyes drifting closed. "Sorry for that."

"It's not your fault," I try to reassure her. Her eyes suddenly snap open, and she struggles to sit up. I push her back down as gently as I can in spite of her resistance. "You need to rest."

"Promise me," she demands despite the weakness that her voice displays. "Promise me you won't let her see."

"I don't understand," I tell her still trying to get her to settle back down.

"Don't let her watch," she insists. "If it isn't gentle, don't let her watch me go."

I understand what she wants, and tears fill my eyes as I answer her.

"I won't," I promise. She smiles at me and ends her struggling. Her eyes close as she drifts back into sleep, but her fingers are still clutching my own.

I sit there for hours with our hands linked between us. I don't do much in the way of thinking. I am only soaking up what may be one of the final moments that I have with her.

"Dad?" I hear from the doorway, and I realize that I am sitting in the dark.

"Can she take the light right now?" She asks.

"I think so," I tell her, and the room is flooded with it. I blink for a moment and realize that Madge is not alone. Ari Everdeen is standing behind her in the doorway. I look at Madge for an explanation, but the woman answers for herself.

"I might be able to help," she says holding up a small packet. "It's not a sure thing, but it helps sometimes with the intensity. I thought since Madge said the Doctor didn't have any suggestions that you might be willing to try."

I don't get to formulate a response.

"Ari?" My wife questions as she stirs and lets go of my hand. She blinks against the light before looking at the two people standing in the doorway. She pushes herself toward sitting, and the other woman rushes over to help her. The automatic response, I think, of someone who spends her life working with the ill and injured. "I thought you had gone." I recognize the tone. She has woken up confused. She has forgotten when she is again.

"Stop hovering in the background, Maysi," she orders Madge. My heart clenches at the practiced manner in which our daughter wipes away the pain of being unrecognized by her mother and begins to cater to her delusion. She moves over to the bed as well.

"I thought you both left me," my wife is saying in a tone of near wonder. "You went away, and there were so many things I never got to tell you." She looks up at me and smiles so happily it nearly takes my breath away. "Girl talk," she tells me. "You go away. I have to tell them all about the baby."

Madge doesn't look at me, but Ari Everdeen does. She nods her head to let me know that it is fine, and I make my way out the door. I can't agree with her. This isn't fine. Nothing is fine.

* * *

(Hazelle)

Posy doesn't like the Tribute Parade. I had mentally prepared myself to find ways to distract her from prattling over whatever pretty outfit Katniss would be placed in this time (I didn't think Gale was in a mental state to deal with his sister's well-intentioned but unfortunate fixations), but it wasn't necessary. She took one look at the picture the Tributes from 12 presented in their costumes and buried her head in my side.

"No," she whispers. "I don't like it."

She doesn't seem to require any more comfort than the rubbing of her back. So, I leave her where she is and stare at the television. It's hard to look away. They outshine all of the others, but I find that I've almost come to expect that from their stylists. The way they have recreated the embers of a fire on their clothing is beautiful. Then, I understand what it is that Posy saw.

If you look at the two of them (if you can pry your eyes from the magic of what they are wearing), you see something that feels what I can only describe as unnatural. They don't look like teenagers. They don't look like two children who are being sent to their deaths. They don't look human. They are something not quite real and all too real all at the same time. They are words like wrath and judgment personified. That's the best description I can find in my head that has gone somewhat fuzzy from the hypnotic quality of the fire mixed with the feeling of impending danger that the two of them are creating. I pull Posy a little closer.

She doesn't talk about it later - none of us do. She merely asks me to assure her that it is over before she lifts her head, and she puts herself to bed. It's the first time that she has ever done that.

The days before the interviews are uneventful except for the appearance of Madge and Prim on my doorstep asking if they may "borrow" Posy. She comes back hours later joyfully prancing into the house with her hair a complicated combination of braids, meadow flowers, and ribbons that I am unsure I will ever be able to convince her to take down. Vick, who had been looking a little disappointed that he hadn't been included in the outing, starts looking relieved that he escaped when Posy proudly shows him the color that has been applied to her toenails.

"Sorry," Madge mouths at me over the children's' heads while inclining her own in the direction of Prim who is actually smiling at the scene. I make a gesture that indicates that I don't mind. I know what she was doing. She gives me a small smile that doesn't reach her eyes and slips out the door while the others are distracted by Rory teasing Vick about how cute he would look with some ribbons in his hair.

The interviews are strange. I've never seen anything like it, but I suppose that is to be expected. These are not the usual children being offered up as sacrifices. These are adults who have all survived the Games. They were promised something if they played the Games and won, and the Capitol has backed down from its promise. It doesn't seem so odd to me that they (most of them) are not quietly playing along.

Katniss's interview dress is sickening, but the transformation is impossible to look away from. I have a bad feeling that her stylist will not be allowed to get away with it, but I don't have enough worry to go around to cover him as well.

It isn't Katniss that is the memorable one from the interviews - even with the burning of the dress. It is Peeta Mellark who everyone will be talking about in the days to come.

Posy, somehow, misses his announcement (or she just doesn't catch the meaning). Rory is shaking his head at the television looking confused. Gale's gotten up to go I don't know where (the fence is still on) when he is stopped by the sound of Vick's laughter. It is such a strange thing to be hearing that we all freeze before turning to look at him. It's like he can't stop himself. He is actually hunched over with his arms wrapped around his middle as he gasps for air in between the bursts of laughter.

The television turns off with a pop behind us, and that seems to break my child out of whatever fit he is having.

"Best liar ever" is the only explanation that he offers, and he refuses to say anything more.

I find later that we missed the Victors joining hands; we were all too focused on Vick.

It seems like no time at all before I am cuddling Posy to my chest in the square as the countdown begins in the arena that seems filled with water as the Third Quarter Quell begins.


	11. Chapter 11

(Mayor Undersee)

I come home on the first day of the Games to find that the number of children that should be found in my home has multiplied. Madge is on the floor as part of what is practically a pile in front of the television. The two blond heads belonging to her and Prim Everdeen are close together as they whisper back and forth. The two dark haired boys flanking them are silent as they watch to see what I will say about finding them unexpectedly on my floor. The one who delivers the laundry - Vick I believe - nudges Madge to get her attention.

"Here was closer," she offers as her explanation before returning to her whispered consultation with Prim. I offer her a nod and head up the stairs to check on my wife. "She's sleeping," Madge calls. I should have known that she would have checked despite the apparent hurry to see what was happening in the Games that prevented her from walking the little girl home.

I sit with her still sleeping mother for a while. It is why I came home from the Justice Building (although part of me is trapped in the melancholy of knowing that it is too little too late). I need to be close to her while I can. I couldn't sit through the meltdown that my daughter's normally unemotional friend had displayed when it looked as though Peeta Mellark was gone and not come home. It's so easy to think that you will have more time later. It was so easy for me to think that I would have more time later. I spent years doing it. I spent years thinking that if I just spent a little more time at the Justice Building, some of the pressure would come off. If I just wrote the right answers, then things would be better. And it would be worth it. I would spend time with my wife when she was having a better day. I would spend time with Madge when I could give her a better District. So, so much time that just slipped away while I was thinking that I would get around to other things someday.

We don't have a someday - my wife and I. Watching Katniss realize (what I think may have been for the first time) that she and the baker's boy aren't going to have one either just brought that to the forefront of my attention.

Madge joins us at some point. I'm not sure how long she was sitting quietly with us before I realized. There's a dinner tray for three sitting on the bedside table. I didn't notice when that got there either.

"Seizure?" I ask her. I hadn't sought out one of the workers who care for the house to check.

"Two," she replies. "But they weren't as violent. I think Mrs. Everdeen's herbs are helping. They still wipe her out though." She studies me for a few moments. "You aren't alright." She says. It isn't a question. I reach out and take her hand in response.

"No square," I tell her changing the subject.

"We already agreed on that," she replies frowning at my refusal to acknowledge her observation. We had. There would be no nights spent watching the Tribute screens in the square this year. It is just too much of a risk to take. Head Peacekeeper Thread might find some way to object and none of us need any more attention. The Undersees, Everdeens, and Hawthornes are already under scrutiny for a variety of reasons.

"Do we still have company?" I inquire.

"No, Gale came to collect them," she replies. "He's in the final group of miners for required viewing, so we'll probably come here after school. He can pick the kids up on his way home."

"Who decided that?" I ask with a small smile playing at the corners of my mouth when I recall the last time there had to be a decision made about who would walk Prim Everdeen home from school.

"It just works out," she says with a shrug. "I need to be here, and I need to spend some time with Prim."

"And the Hawthorne children come with the package," I conclude.

"Vick would probably find his way here anyway," she says with the best smile I've seen from her since her mother's seizure on the day of the Reaping.

"No more Donners," my wife joins the conversation with a thin, tired voice that still manages to convey amusement. I hadn't realized that she had woken. "She had to find someone to teach."

* * *

(Hazelle)

The boys pounce on Posy as soon as they clear the door. I'm tempted to pounce on them in turn, but I refrain. I just keep telling myself that it wasn't real. My children are as safe as they can be. It wasn't really them screaming in those tortured voices.

Madge hovers just outside looking like she might not mind gushing over Posy a bit herself. She catches me looking at her and decides she needs to offer an explanation.

"As soon as I realized what was happening, I rushed them back home," she tells me. "He'll be home soon," she adds. I know that she is referring to Gale who is trapped in his required viewing hours in the square. He won't be taking it well. I can only hope that Thom can keep him from doing something stupid.

"I think we'll walk over to meet him," I tell her deciding that it is the best way to handle this new trauma that has been thrown at my family. She nods her head and turns to go after taking one last look at the three of my brood that are huddled together in the same chair.

Gale was frantic by the time he was released from the square, but the collection of siblings that he gathered in his arms seemed to take it down a notch or two.

"I hate them," he told me without even trying to whisper. "I hate them all." I couldn't get anything else out of him for the rest of the night.

The Tributes on the screen are setting up some sort of plan involving wire and water that I most definitely do not understand when Rory and Vick make their appearance. Gale doesn't enter with them. I realize why when I move closer to the door and hear the sound of voices out front over the background noise of Posy telling the boys about her day.

"She was avoiding us," Madge is saying in what may be the loudest voice I have ever heard her use. Whatever it is that they are discussing, she is teetering on the edge of losing her patience. "You couldn't have not noticed that. She had things to say to us - things she was saving for her good-byes, and she wanted to say them when we wouldn't have any time to argue with her."

It's easy to tell that she's talking about Katniss. I can't make out the muttered response that my son makes to her, but I think it may have been a grunt rather than actual words.

"She isn't planning on coming back," Madge tells him, and I hold my breath waiting for his response. I don't know whether it is better or not for someone to confront him with that fact before it happens on the screen. I've seen that girl on the television and how desperate she has been to protect the boy who entered the arena with her. I don't think anyone but my son (so determined to keep everything in his life from changing) can have watched and not accepted that fact.

"You can't keep doing this," she doesn't sound impatient any longer. Her voice has shifted to something calmer with just a trace of worry. "You can't go around angry all the time about everything with nowhere for it to go. It's going to build up inside and take you over. Then, it's going to be all that you are."

I lose my chance to hear Gale's response between my own surprise at the vocalization of some of my thoughts and the crash that comes from Rory having wrestled Vick to the floor. I am not certain what they were doing, but the conversation outside my door has moved on by the time I am able to return to my eavesdropping. I do not feel badly for listening in; I'm his mother, and I know there are things that he needs to understand.

"You don't owe me anything, Hawthorne," she is saying. Gale has said something to upset her. That is very clear. "So stop acting like your little brother is part of a business transaction." Gale slams the door behind him. I send the children out of the room to wash up.

"She isn't wrong," I offer. He grunts in reply. I don't appreciate it.

"You can't keep holding it in," I tell him knowing that I have mere moments before the children will return ending the conversation. "It's going to come bursting out of you in ways you've lost control over."

"I don't know how," he tells me looking at me with such a lost expression that I want to pick him up and rock him like I did when he was little and had skinned knees. He's too big for that now. "I don't know how to be anything but angry anymore." The younger ones tromp back into the room, and the moment passes.

"You were rude," I tell him later (after I've listened to Vick's rendition of what Madge and Gale clearly thought they were discussing over the kids' heads on their walk home).

"I'll apologize to her later," he promises without putting up a pretense of not knowing what I am talking about. "Just when this is over, okay?"


	12. Chapter 12

(Mayor Undersee)

There seemed to be some sort of silent disagreement that didn't look as though it were going to remain silent for long when Madge left to walk the children home. I intended to ask what it was about when she returned home, but I never got the chance. By the time she arrived, I was settled in a vigil with her mother. It took our daughter less than a minute to access the situation. The shallowness of her mother's breathing and the somewhat lost looks being displayed by the staff from their places hovering in the doorway were enough to tell her that the moment had come. Then, we became vigil keepers together as her mother sank further and further away from us.

I panicked when the seizures hit. They were more violent than anything I had seen before, and it felt as if they were going on forever. The moments between when the first one ended and the second one began were few, but they were enough for me to realize the reality of the situation. We were losing her, and it wasn't going to be the quiet affair that we had hoped. The four of us were standing and sitting around staring with nothing to do that could help. That was when I remembered my promise. I had to get Madge out of there.

I palmed the packet from Ari Everdeen that had rested on the bedside table and gave my daughter no time to question my sudden assertion that we were out of the herbs that had been helping her mother and she had to go and see about getting more. It was a sign that I wasn't alone in my panic that she went without comment about my sudden change of heart about trips through the District in the middle of the night.

A sad sort of understanding nod from our housekeeper reassured me that I was right to fulfill my wife's request. Then, I stopped registering the fact that my wife and I were not alone. I couldn't do anything to stop the seizures that were coursing through her body. I couldn't do anything to head off the inevitable. I could only try to hold her hand, talk to her, and hope that it still meant something to her to know that I was with her.

"I love you so very, very much," I told her. "You and our daughter are the best things that have ever happened to me, and I am so grateful to have you. I'll take care of our girl; I promise. I'll do my best to keep her safe without stifling her. That's a big job that you've given me. It won't be easy to do both, but I'm going to try because that's what you want. I love you as much as we love her."

Another small pause was occurring at the end of yet another seizure when two things happened in quick succession. First, the power went out. It didn't flicker. It didn't surge. It just disappeared. Second, came a pounding on our front door that would have been out of place on any day - let alone the middle of the night.

I heard muttering and rustling and what may have been the sound of someone missing one of the stairs, but I was too focused to do much in the way of processing what I was hearing. I was too busy waiting for the sound that I was now expecting - Peacekeepers. I could only think that it couldn't be now. They couldn't come to take me away now - not when she still needed me. It turned out that there weren't any Peacekeepers.

Mrs. Cartwright appeared in the doorway with the flickering of candles held by the housekeeper and herself lighting her way. It was so not what I expected to be seeing that I had difficulty recognizing the image for what it was. Another seizure began and I decided to worry about the woman's presence later. I started in on my attempts at comforting reassurance again - not able to care who overheard any longer.

When things were quieter, she offered an explanation for her presence.

"Madge tripped and fell in front of our place," she told me as she did her best not to stare at the disheveled state in which she found us. I made a mental note that I would need to thank her for that attempt at kindness at some point. "We were up watching the Games," she continued. "And we heard her. I think her ankle might be turned, but I'm not sure. She told us where she was headed, and Delly offered to go for her. She and her brother are on their way to the Everdeens' house now." She lowered her voice a bit and whispered in my direction. "I thought you might be wanting her out for a bit," she said with a look of parental understanding visible in the shadows that played across her face in the light from the candle.

"She was in a right state, so I told her I would come along and tell you what was happening while my husband wrapped up her ankle for her. Would you like us to try to keep her with us for a bit? I told Hiram to flub around with the wrapping some; I don't think she'll want to stay put for long once it's done."

I was opening my mouth to answer her when all of us who were cognizant of the world around us instinctively turned toward the window in response to the strange sound that we were hearing. In the time that it took to process what it was that was making the noise, the hovercrafts were close enough to start carrying out their mission.

The bombs are falling, and my District is burning. And I can only give my wife's hand one final squeeze as I understand that I won't have to care for our daughter without her after all.

* * *

Author's Note - This is where this particular story comes to an end. I would like to offer a thank you to my very loyal reviewer who found this story early and stayed with it to the end (even though she doesn't want to read this chapter). It made my day on more than one occasion to know that you were enjoying this so much.


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